ill!' llli::sii;6'ii?- 
 
 
 
 !!i'riii!W^:i!i:v',': 
 
 |!i 
 
 P!iii|i3|ili|!ii!;i|lil 
 
 illiiiiiiliililisiii 
 
 Viil'i ! ' i5'*!vt.i'^'^^•■ 
 i^l|i!'iislM|feii!;i;i;'■
 
 a I B RARY 
 
 OF THE 
 UNIVLRSITY 
 or ILLINOIS
 
 CENTRAL CIRCULATION BOOKSTACKS 
 
 The person charging this material is re- 
 sponsible for its renewal or its return to 
 the library from which it was borrowed 
 on or before the Latest Date stamped 
 below. The Minimum Fee for each Lost 
 Book is $50.00. 
 
 Theft, mutilation, and underlining of books are reasons 
 for disciplinary action and may result in dismissal from 
 the University. 
 TO RENEW CALL TELEPHONE CENTER, 333-8400 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LIBRARY AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN 
 
 mi3h 
 
 NOV 17 
 
 1994 
 
 When renewing by phone, write new due date below 
 previous due date. LI 62
 
 The 
 
 MOUNTAIN DECAMERON. 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 J. B. NICHOLS AND SON, 25, PARLIAMENT STREET.
 
 THE 
 
 MOUNTAIN 
 
 DECAMERON 
 
 BY JOSEPH DOWNES. 
 
 IN THREE VOLUMES. 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
 LONDON: 
 RICK-\RD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTOxV STREET 
 
 SUCCESSOR TO HENRY COLBURN. 
 
 1836.
 
 8£3 
 
 DEDICATION. 
 
 TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE 
 
 THOMAS FRANKLAND LEWIS, 
 
 OF HARPTON COURT, RADNORSHIRE. 
 
 Sir, 
 In the case of a celebrated author dedicat- 
 ing a work to a distinguished character, some 
 reciprocity of favour may be deemed to exist ; 
 but an obscure one must hmit his humbler aim 
 to the hope of not dishonouring a patron by 
 any flagrant defect in his offering. In such 
 predicament stands the individual who now 
 avails himself of your permission to inscribe 
 with your name The Mountain Decameron. 
 He is conscious of labouring under a sort of 
 double obscurity : not only as a man unknown, 
 but belonging to a country (wonderful to say !) 
 almost equally unknown, in a wide sense of
 
 VI DEDICATION. 
 
 that word, although the most beautiful province 
 of the United Kingdom — the one most identi- 
 fied with its old romantic history — the theatre 
 of a triumphant resistance to successive in- 
 vaders, through upwards of seven hundred 
 years. 
 
 Why Wales, with all its celebrity as a land 
 of landscapes, enjoys none whatever in any 
 other point of view — why it exhibits a total 
 blank in British literature — why a region which 
 the hand of nature has stamped with an im- 
 perishable beauty, — and decay itself has contri- 
 buted to adorn, and still further adapt to the 
 highest purpose of imaginative art, even as a 
 theatre for the Tragic Muse herself, with her 
 " gorgeous pall," — should so long be neglected 
 by dramatist and novelist, when Ireland and 
 Scotland have been familiarised to the English 
 reading public, by the highest genius, — these 
 are questions not to be discussed here, how- 
 ever curious and remarkable. 
 
 Too correct in his self-estimation to emu- 
 late the genius of a Scott or an Edgeworth, 
 the -writer of this tribute to the attractions 
 of this sublime region of ruins, rocks, and 
 floods, is also too proud to imitate the outer
 
 DEDICATION. Vll 
 
 form under which that genius has been de- 
 veloped. This is therefore no addition to 
 that somewhat hackneyed species^ the "Na- 
 tional Novel." All that he pretends to^ is to 
 present certain portraitures of passions^ such 
 as in the hands of a real master — a tragic 
 " spirit of the age," (should such long-looked- 
 for hero ever appear) might become not un- 
 worthy of so sulDlime and solemn a stage for 
 their enactment, as he has long considered the 
 mountain solitudes of your native country, 
 which to his (perhaps wild) fancy, seem almost 
 to stand waiting for such exhibition, in their 
 monastic solemnity and tragic associations with 
 a fallen throne, and wild and dark legendary 
 as well as national history. 
 
 Should such commingling of literary ro- 
 mance, with its natural romantic charms, tend 
 in the least degree to draw more public atten- 
 tion to all the features of this neglected Sister 
 Province of England, you will perhaps not 
 deem this book wholly unworthy of your pa- 
 tronage ; the lively interest you always felt in 
 the welfare of the Principality, not having 
 merged in that wider sphere of solicitude, to 
 which your talents and integrity have caused
 
 vm DEDICATION. 
 
 you to be summoned. The epithet of '^ Friends 
 of the People '' has been perverted into one of 
 odious secret import ; the very reverse of it is 
 ostensible ; but that of ^' Friends of the Poor " 
 was one which the Incas of Peru (as the his- 
 tories of that country prove) coveted beyond 
 all other more high-sounding titles attached 
 to their supremacy. 
 
 That your power to lessen the sufferings of 
 a great class of your fellow-creatures — the Des- 
 titute — in some measure committed to your 
 care, may prove commensurate with your will, 
 so as ultimately to establish your claim to that 
 enviable title, which even Sovereignty wisely 
 aspired to merit, is the very sincere wish of. 
 
 Sir, 
 your most obedient and 
 Builth, obliged servant, 
 
 Brecknockshire, JOSEPH DOWNES. 
 
 April 10, 1836.
 
 PREFACE, 
 
 WrtH SOME REMARKS ON OUR PRESENT 
 IMAGINATIVE LITERATURE. 
 
 The '^vox populi,'' having pronounced a 
 Preface an impertinence, imposes on a bashful 
 author a double task ; for, inasmuch as he can- 
 not take courage to appear without something 
 in the shape of a prefatory apology, this into- 
 lerance of prefaces seems to require that he 
 shall begin by apologising for his apology. 
 Doubtless, there is something of gallant bear- 
 ing, an indication of vast merit, in the rushing 
 of a literary new-comer into the arena, in the 
 naked strength and self-confidence of author- 
 ship, as who should say ^ Here I am !' Self- 
 sufficiency is more promising than that old- 
 fashioned modesty, which came cringing with 
 deprecatory addresses. But " tempora mutan- 
 tur^^ and the spirit of prefaces is changed with 
 them. For, whereas such addresses were 
 designed to excuse the vanity of so mighty an 
 ambition as that for Uterary fame, such as fame 
 
 VOL. I. B
 
 2 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 was — our modern preface-writer may quite as 
 reasonably labour therein to disclaim the pueri- 
 lity of an ambition so poor as that which can 
 covet literary fame — such as it now is in 
 England^ — the ^^ nominis umbra," — the shadow 
 of the true, the "immortaP^ — and nothing 
 more. 
 
 On the ground, then, of possibly saving 
 trouble to the persons who may take up this 
 book with a view to reading it, this preface is 
 obtruded on them to serve the same purpose as 
 does a bill of fare before a more substantial 
 species of entertainment. 
 
 First, to the gentlemen of Wales the author 
 deems it best, at once, to confess that this 
 '-' Mountain-Decameron '^ does not relate ex- 
 clusively to the Welsh, the whole Welsh, and 
 nothing but the Welsh. He presumes to hope, 
 nevertheless, that such gentlemen will not 
 throw it down again in disappointment, but 
 deign to share what amusement it may afford, 
 even with the Saxon " foreigner.'^ 
 
 Its design embraces the great ^^many-coloured 
 life,^' not life in Wales only — the passions of 
 men, not of Welshmen only — the beauty of 
 Scenery in general, though chiefly that of their 
 fine and neglected country ; and this because, 
 in the opinion of those who have travelled far
 
 PREFACE. O 
 
 in many lands, and with an eye and mind for 
 Nature, that country is not excelled in picto- 
 rial beauty by even the finest scenes such ex- 
 tensive travel has presented to their view.* 
 
 The author will avow further, that it dares to 
 deal with greatness generally — the moral and 
 the pictorial, — whether in the outer world or 
 that inner microcosm, the heart of man, — 
 whether for the eye, or the eye of the mind, — 
 whether for good or for evil. Moreover, Wales 
 is, most strange to say, very nearly unbroken 
 ground in English literature — quite such in the 
 romantic department. Yet who, alive to taste 
 or feeling, can look without some impulse 
 toward the tragic — some touch of romantic 
 melancholy — on its lone cataracts, its cloud- 
 capt rocks — its vestiges of departed great- 
 ness — its mighty wrecks of castles breasting 
 stormy seas — of abbeys, crumbling in the 
 olive-coloured glooms of russet heights and 
 leafy umbrage, — its Carneddan, its ruins, and 
 its tombs ? t or who roam vacant through the 
 
 * The late Bishop Heber, somewhere in his Correspondence, 
 gives the preference to Wales, above all the countries which 
 his fine taste or religious zeal tempted him to explore : for 
 "pastoral beauty and the softer species of the sublime in 
 landscape," it remained unrivalled. 
 
 t With a thousand apologies to the higher orders of Welsh, 
 B 2
 
 4 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 summer valleys^ with the river-blue, and cot- 
 tage-white intermingled, — with the universal 
 green colour of the very air among so many 
 pastoral mountains, joined to such poetical 
 modes of life, without something of lyrical 
 inspiration under such lingering reflections of 
 a golden age ? The common nomenclature of 
 its topography involves both poetry and his- 
 
 it must be owned that this can the modern gentleman of 
 Wales I The ruins that peep on his path, the dark hints of 
 past tragic events, that, even in the common names of 
 places, his familiar haunts, in the business of hunting and 
 shooting, " implore the passing tribute of a sigh" — implore 
 it in vain ! The lightest, most tasteful antiquarianism, is 
 heavy and vapid midst the excitement of the chase, or other 
 excitements more fatal to health. 
 
 There is in fact, and literally, no Reading Public in Wales, 
 but the better educated part of the more secluded Welsh 
 peasantry. The gentry of Wales dispute this, but they had 
 better disprove it. Let them do so by attaching some import- 
 ance to so invaluable a resource, one so innocent, so exalt- 
 ing, so vital to good morals as reading. Vermin hunting 
 might stiU be the grand resource. 
 
 Facts are stubborn things. Seventeen Welsh periodicals 
 circulate well among the humbler classes ! One, conducted 
 with ability — and with great sacrifice by the spirited patrons 
 of it, to the honour of their country — one acknowledged as 
 worthy of support, by high critical authorities not Welsh — 
 has at last ceased to circulate for want of that support from 
 the gentry. Other orders, seventeen — the gentry not one : 
 verbum sat.
 
 PREFACE. 5 
 
 torical romance, and often deep tragedy, like 
 the solemn conjectural whisperings from almost 
 fabulous times to ours, in the half-effaced, 
 hardly deciphered, hieroglyphical memorials on 
 an age-worn tomb, or coffin -stone of Egypt. 
 There is the Fynnon Waedog ('^Bloody Well '^) — 
 the Pant y Gwaye (the *^^ Hollow of Woe^^) — 
 the Maen Achwynfan (the " Stone of La- 
 mentation and Weeping ^^) — the Llysan Gwaed 
 Gwyr (the "Plant of the Blood of Man''). 
 What a terrible mystery of some dark actual 
 tragedy of life, now buried under pleasant 
 daisied fields, and mountain banks now echoing 
 only bleatings and lowings, do these more than 
 half unveil — and by a single name ! 
 
 All these characteristics seemed to the author 
 to give to North and South Wales great attrac- 
 tions, as a solemn, a beautiful, and a new stage, 
 for the enactment of " high actions" — that is, 
 actions rendered high by height of passion — 
 "every new-sprung turn" of which is (according 
 to Dryden, writing of dramatic poetry) — "an 
 auction in itself* — ^in which a peasant or sheep- 
 breeder (even a modern and a Welsh one) may 
 certainly figure as proudly or even fearfully as 
 a prince : vehement emotion, and the higher 
 tragical passions being of no age, rank, or
 
 6 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 country, but equally sublime in their features, 
 under whatever costume or station. 
 
 The author is not " rushing in '^ to tread this 
 high ground to which the modern Muses so 
 rarely aspire, in sheer simplicity, or in ignorance 
 that it is one dangerous to tread, and (reputed) 
 difficult to reach. 
 
 Let the reader be prepared with his smile for 
 the vanity or insanity of authorship — the writer 
 is at least prepared for it. But he prefers the 
 possible fall to the inevitable prostration of 
 wilfully crawling in a crowd, in such proneness, 
 as the "mob of honourable men,^^ who now 
 engross the honours of a short-lived popularity, 
 seem content to adopt, to keep each other in 
 countenance; holding each another's skirt, 
 while they creep up the steps of a Temple of 
 Fame — of their own. 
 
 The " vile iteration '^ of poetry, of novel, of 
 romance, of imaginative efforts of so many kinds, 
 that do not even appeal to one lofty emotion, 
 do not lay the hand on the ever-waiting lyre of 
 the heart of man, must be wearying to thou- 
 sands as well as to the writer of this. Why, then, 
 not break away from such a beaten track^ where 
 to follow is certain failure ? He would rather 
 have those authors' laughter, if he leap only to
 
 PREFACE. 7 
 
 fall, than their praise for walking equo passu, 
 by their side — he would rather continue as one 
 buried alive in the grave of utter neglect, than 
 share their triumph, and ascend his own little 
 triumphal car of gingerbread gold with the 
 best of them — even were it possible for his 
 voice, doubly overwhelmed by their noise of 
 careering over his head, and the heaviness of 
 friendless obscurity (and perhaps other heavi- 
 ness) on his breast, to reach the ear of the 
 world — he would " rather be a kitten, and cry 
 mew," than swell the common cry of those — 
 than " strut his hour '^ as such a hero of bib- 
 liopolical glory. 
 
 To paint the human heart in storm — (a 
 moral spectacle as grand and elevating to the 
 soul as that of a stormy ocean) — to relieve its 
 terrors and its gloom, by the gentler touches of 
 woman^s tenderness — of the thousand sweet- 
 nesses of childhood, — of love, pity, the genero- 
 sity of self-devotion — such great, such delight- 
 ful exercise of human sensibilities — is the en- 
 deavour, at least, of this Mountain-Decameron. 
 Of the attempt the author will never be ashamed, 
 however this Age of Utility may, — like the 
 "world" to Goldsmith^s young writer's para- 
 doxes — " say nothing " to the attempt. 
 
 Further, the writer will avow his persuasion,
 
 8 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 that to soar into the region of the stormy pas- 
 sions is only difficulty from modern writers 
 being ashamed — or too book-learned^ and too 
 worldly wise, too cunning in the craft of 
 getting-up a pretty book to sell — to write from 
 their own hearts, from nature only; not, of 
 course, excluding all aids from education, which 
 may give grace to their wings when flying ; but 
 ^imping' that wing with none but the feathers 
 of the eagle, and winging their way no lower 
 than that proud bird stoops to haunt, which 
 hangs poised, now over green sunshiny dales 
 of sheepfolds, in the stillest blue of noon, and, 
 presently, is up in the black storms, or tearing 
 its bleeding prey, with screams of wild unity 
 with its ^ pride of place/ perched on the ruins 
 of the thunder-splintered towers of some Nor- 
 wegian rock washed by a shipwrecking sea. 
 
 This persuasion overpowers, in his oivn 
 mind, the author's selfwarning whisper of bold- 
 ness or absurdity in this indulgence of invo- 
 luntary aspiration, for effort it is not. The 
 more terrible and arousing the occasion, or the 
 more melting and moving, — the more powerful, 
 of course, the impression, voluptuous or grave. 
 Now, if an author has but feeling, if those 
 impressions are the real springs of his dramatic 
 movements, is not the very force of the blow
 
 PREFACE. 9 
 
 struck, or the very sweetness of the touch, the 
 greatest aid to his progress ? And if he will 
 utterly renounce obedience to his inward im- 
 pulse — regard only what is going on among 
 those he is about to address, that run about 
 asking who was the last " immortal '^ poet of 
 the season, which acted the " great ^^ yesterday, 
 and which is to be crowned to-day ? — if he 
 throws himself wholly on his own fevered imagin- 
 ings of what it would be pretty and lady-pleas- 
 ing to say, instead of waiting and listening 
 retired in his own yet green heart, as in a bower 
 for the voice of his Egeria, Natural Emotion — 
 instead of attending to what Nature would say 
 in the supposed situation — what marvel if he 
 fail as utterly and ridiculously, as would a player, 
 who, through eager attention to the idle buzz of 
 his audience, will not listen to his prompter ? 
 A worthy audience he can charm only by know- 
 ing well his part, which part, only that prompter 
 can supply. Were such "poor player,^^ despising 
 the Author^s words, to attempt to palm his own 
 cold fancies on the House, for the true language, 
 would not such impostor be bolder than the 
 player who should, however awkwardly^ do his 
 best to recover the true words of the drama ? 
 However imperfectly, the writer of these things 
 will prefer trying to catch the voice of Nature 
 B 5
 
 10 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 — the mighty prompter^ to trusting himself, or 
 the false prompter Fashion. Should the ima- 
 gined crisis be one to set Nature weeping, or 
 even raging in the sublime of despair and 
 agony, — if the occasion do actually warrant, — 
 he will not he deterred hy any squeamish prudery 
 of reproofs or cold-blooded ridicule, from meet- 
 ing that occasion — well knowing that the 
 modesty of Nature and the modesty of Fashion 
 differ as much as the modest nakedness of a 
 babe, and the exquisite dread of exposure lisped 
 forth by a shameless prostitute ; — that the for- 
 mer is ''never to be overstepped '^ — the latter 
 continually, — if Horace is to be admitted any 
 authority, in the kind of achievements which 
 alone distinguish the true Poet from the false. 
 To arouse, to transport, to '' storm the breast,"* 
 which Johnson (even the frigid Johnson) 
 recognizes as the highest glory of Shakespeare, 
 is to be disgusting, or ridiculous, to modern 
 pretended adorers of Shakespeare ! f 
 
 * His powerful strokes presiding Truth imprest, 
 
 And unresisted Passion stormed the bx'east. — Johnson. 
 
 t It is a rather perplexing task to any writer, tremblingly 
 approaching the most just tribunal of public taste in this year 
 of grace 1836 — to reconcile its varying canons. For example, 
 madness is often pronounced something too awful to be the 
 subject of imaginative pleasure (as if, by the way, midnight
 
 PREFACE. 1 1 
 
 A new writer presenting poetical prose to a 
 public utterly nauseating poetry, may be 
 allowed to say a few words on what is called 
 the Decline of Poetry. This, and the Fall of 
 
 murder, the stealing of a husband to the bed of a wife who is 
 to be smothered — as if, in short, the very staple of tragedy- 
 were not terrible as well as madness) yet standard works of 
 Imagination, not of to-day — are full of such portraits, to say 
 nothing of an Ophelia and a Lear, and they are not meddled 
 with, having passed the ordeal. Is then an author to consider 
 that to-day he is on forbidden ground, being not yet among 
 the known, but should miraculous luck, to-morrow, lift him 
 into day-light, what was yesterday forbidden, loathsome, re- 
 volting, is become fair field and lawful ? The same incon- 
 sistency marks its verdicts on empassioned writing in general, 
 where the only difference consists in the era or author, which 
 cannot alter the fitness of a subject for the public eye. 
 
 In one of the Tales here collected, this fearful ground is 
 ventured on. The part embracing this subject — it will be 
 perceived by those to whom the terrible tale of Matthew 
 Wald, published several years ago, is familiar, — was suggested 
 by the reminiscences of that tremendous shadowy hiatus, or 
 dusk chasm in Wald's life, which divides it into two portions, 
 in that wild and singular jwetical autobiography. An objec- 
 tion which the writer saw made to that work in some periodical, 
 as ^^ over tragical, '^ as ^^ too full of harrowing situations, ''^ 
 &c. &c. first tempted him to its perusal ; and is the point 
 indeed on which this allusion to it is made — this being deemed 
 by the critic a defect, which made the work less popular than 
 others by the same author. Yet these previous situations are 
 what alone give that fine and solemn effect, which every poetic 
 reader must be sensible of, to the unlooked-for troubled and 
 awful calm of the restored madman's Parthian glance, at that 
 hideous battle fought in dark with his fate's crisis, which
 
 12 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 the Tragic Drama^ as simultaneous^ he presumes 
 must be considered also as arising from one 
 cause, and both parts of one ' movement ' — the 
 March of Vandalism — the same which, corrupt- 
 ing her very tongue, and brutalizing Rome in 
 her falling days, prepared the Mistress of the 
 World for her fast approaching, new, miserable 
 character — that of a slave to barbarians. 
 
 Much conjecturing has been hazarded to 
 account for this state — much wonder expressed 
 that no great tragic poet arises now as of old — 
 that our poetry (distinct from the drama), what- 
 ever may be its descriptive merit, has no pas- 
 sion; description (its only excellence) being 
 carried into this department also, our passions 
 being merely described not imitated. Perhaps 
 it were as reasonable to wonder in an empty 
 worship place, why no priest appears, why no 
 organ sounds, no service begins, when we see 
 that there is no congregation — that those who 
 should form it are forming a mob round some 
 fanatical mountebank outside of the temple, in 
 
 struck the writer as' something like the grand elemental poetry 
 of such a fiery sunset as we often see bursting out of the 
 west " on the very edge of Night," as the Welsh say. With- 
 out the tempestuous previous clouds of the life''s day, as the 
 natural day's, there could be no such spectacle. — The hints 
 taken from that strangely mournful outbreak (excepting its 
 calm) are here acknowledged.
 
 PREFACE. 13 
 
 the thronged street — that the ranter, or what- 
 ever he may be, is pouring such a flood of 
 reUgious words and big — such furious fiery 
 somethings ^ signifying nothing,' (but so like 
 the language of inspiration as to pass for it): — 
 that they fancy themselves filled with religion, 
 when really their ears only are ringing with 
 blasphemous nonsense, in jargon echoing the 
 mere sound of the voice of prophecy and the 
 true divinity. May not this metaphor illus- 
 trate the world^s expectation of some tragic 
 poet to spring up to no audience, as well as 
 the present delusions practised on public 
 vitiated taste, by some mock priests of the 
 Temple of the Muse, who fill the ear with mere* 
 verbiage, and the fancy with a few rootless 
 flowers of poesy, instead of inviting the heart 
 and mind to the stirring reality ? 
 
 Is it strange that this long talked-of hero 
 does not stand knocking at shut-up hearts, 
 when we see the public rage for more coarse ap- 
 peals to the grosser faculties ? — that the " most 
 thinking people ^' w^ould rather laugh than cry — 
 rather gape than listen — that an elephant dis- 
 putes their plaudits with a Kean — that the 
 example of this is set them by those of eminent 
 stations — that the deadened moral appetite is 
 gone beyond the power of a generous cordial
 
 14 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 to restore, in its deadly atony, and rather needs 
 fire, needs the combustibles of sedition and civil 
 war to excite it now, than aliment to nourish ? 
 as indicative of utter depravation of morals as 
 well as taste, this atony must be regarded as 
 ill-omened to the best interests of civilized 
 men. Let those who wish their ^^ days to be 
 long in the land which the Lord their God 
 hath given them/' not contemn those signs 
 that mark its moral state, this contemptible (as 
 some may deem) spot in the moral hemisphere, 
 which yet may prove the brewing of whole 
 hurricanes, however as yet but a spot. 
 
 The causes of revolution, not confined to 
 taste, are in active operation. The callous self- 
 ishness of the esprit de commerce creeps cold 
 about the very hearths-core of British society, 
 and diffuses its blind ridicule of all the higher 
 aspirations of all kinds not directly tending to 
 the ledger. There is the utilitarian class, which 
 would push their own argument ad absurdum, 
 confuting themselves, till by abolishing all the 
 graces and amenities of life, they would render 
 life itself a hard slavery, therefore a useless gift 
 of God — God who gave flowers as well as herbs 
 to the world, and heart-strings to man, as well 
 as sinews and bones. Next, see trade, philo- 
 sophy, (or the cant of it,) each severally assist-
 
 PREFACE. 15 
 
 ing to turn against the philosophy of feeUng, 
 the popular laugh. The useless classes of mere 
 fashion seize the pretext of this tide setting in 
 against it, and sneer as wisely as the ^^fat and 
 greasy citizen/^ or scheming utilitarian, against 
 the uselessness oi poetry in its many impulses 
 and forms, merely to sanction their own heart- 
 less abandonment to poor and frivolous pur- 
 suits, or rather no pursuits. Again, the fecu- 
 lent lowest current of this great sea has its 
 own arousing agents, (demagogues, and moral 
 harlequins of all kinds,) that utterly prevent all 
 calm, and all lucidness of intellect. 
 
 What is the world of Imagination to the 
 sordid, the ever busy, the ever idle (the fribble 
 of fashion,) the theory-mad, the faction-mad, or 
 alas ! the hunger-mad ? A world wholly veiled 
 from their eyes ! or, if unveiled, neither tempt- 
 ing nor easily conceivable, in its elements of 
 greatness, or its power of delighting. We may 
 say it is no more than one of the worlds of the 
 midnight heavens to grazing brutes, who dream 
 not of their existence, except when forced upon 
 their senses, by ghttering in their very eyes ; 
 and when thus unveiled to them, as little con- 
 ceive of their real attributes of grandeur and 
 utility, shining cold as they do — (the mere 
 poetry of the universe to them,) in fields of
 
 16 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 uneatable blue, a strange-coloured grass, and 
 on an unscaleable hill ! A very poor affair that 
 heaven, compared with the poorest field that 
 they can both reach and feed in, and gambol 
 round, and pollute ! 
 
 Even to reason's eye, and real wisdom, the 
 imaginative part of our existence, and all enthu- 
 siasm, all chivalric sentiment, have their gro- 
 tesque side, their prima facie absurdity. But 
 is it really wise to overlook what lurks under 
 this Quixotic mask, so easily removed ? the 
 glow of generosity— the diversion from self — 
 the fine humanity which it keeps cherishing 
 warm beneath, in the popular heart ? Those 
 worldly-wise men are traitors to the world^s 
 best interests, who encourage the laugh against 
 all lofty enthusiasm, and join the ^'^long puU, 
 and the strong pull, and the pull altogether,^* 
 to drag down poetry (using that word in its 
 widest acceptation) ^^ from heaven to earth," to 
 the level of those grosser resources, which the 
 brutes themselves almost divide with us — that 
 there may no longer exist that mystic golden 
 ladder between "earth and heaven," which one 
 may venture to consider mingled Meditation 
 and Emotion — that escape from things "earthy,^* 
 which the best and greatest men of the best 
 and greatest eras have loved to preserve — by
 
 PREFACE. 17 
 
 which Plato, and even more active sages, 
 retained that fine and pure health of heart and 
 mind, which confinement to worldly things, 
 and the selfishness of city pursuits, would have 
 destroyed. Why cannot Science and Utility 
 keep the " tenor of their way " (a glorious way) 
 without insisting on driving over the softer 
 sciences of the heart? Why should the active 
 and scientific sneer at such sort of beautiful 
 verdant byeway to the serene region of philo- 
 sophic melancholy or imagination, which even 
 the demigods of the golden ages of Greece and 
 Rome so highly venerated, even while striving 
 ^' might and main ^' in the cause of legislation 
 or a republic, as strenuously as Mr. Jeremy' 
 Bentham, or Mr. Joseph Hume ? 
 
 Finally, in extenuation of what will perhaps 
 be deemed presumptuous ambition thus an- 
 nounced, the writer begs it may be remem- 
 bered, that he is pleading for no novelty in 
 composition, which he conceits himself the 
 inventor of, but merely a bona fide return to 
 th?it honest, hear tfelty fearless tone of expres- 
 sion, which distinguished our glorious old 
 dramatists — for a little indulgence to those 
 flowers, even in prose, which Jeremy Taylor 
 did not deem unworthy of even divinity, nor
 
 18 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 Bacon disdain to strew, even copiously, over 
 philosophy's rugged path. 
 
 What eulogiums are still justly bestowed on 
 the inimitable prose of the former ! Yet, were 
 a writer to put forth to-day, prose half as pro- 
 fusely adorned with poetic fancies, would not 
 the very panegyrists of the old fall foul of the 
 modern page, as ^'^ prose run mad?'' I verily be- 
 lieve it, and cannot perceive the consistency of 
 such criticism. What has been published in 
 imitation of the writers of the Elizabethan age, 
 in the dramatic walk, breathes more of the 
 obsolete mannerism, than the substantial genius 
 of that period, according to the critics. 
 
 Resigning the auctorial pompous periphrasis 
 of the third person I shall entreat, '"beloved 
 reader," your indulgence for much quaintness, 
 perhaps obscurity, certainly much ignorance of 
 the outer world at least, which I feel assured 
 that you will discover in these pages. Doubt- 
 less, if I be as ignorant of the heart and human 
 character, as I am of the world and the worldly 
 character, my authorship will be a woful 
 failure. 
 
 Something, I hope, is to be allowed for the 
 self-delusions of an almost Hteral hermit. Shut 
 up or wandering among mountains for these
 
 PREFACE. 19 
 
 many years past, conversing with few but the 
 rudest people, I have not the advantage of li- 
 terary or other refined society, to freshen my 
 stagnating thoughts, or correct my erroneous 
 ones ; to tell me where those thoughts are not 
 duly elicited, or where it were more graceful to 
 suppress them. I am my own adviser and my 
 own critic, my own '' pensive public," and 
 hence, perhaps, ought to be less-severely quizzed 
 if I become, as in the previous lines — my " own 
 trumpeter.'^ Nor do mountains alone consti- 
 tute my solitude, but the misfortune of ante- 
 dating old age by the loss of friends. The 
 splendid streets of your huge metropolis, with 
 their immense throngs of people, are to some' 
 few bosom-aliens among them, more deeply 
 solitary than mountain-avenues, with their mul- 
 titude of trees and moving flocks. For myself, 
 I can say that the mighty " hum '^ of those 
 crowds no more disturbs me, who neither share 
 in the chase of their many interests nor swell 
 the cry, than does the constant roar of the ca- 
 taracts of my home country. Nor do I state 
 this without a latent conceit that possibly such 
 a recluse, addressing such an audience as the 
 " Reading Public/^ may be regarded as a curious 
 kind of monster. In such solitude, it is na- 
 tural for the unguided mind (especially if in
 
 20 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 old time enthusiastic) both to hope and de- 
 spond to excess. I have however reached that 
 stage of '^ Ufe's poor play '^ when a writer (and 
 still more if he be a parent) has a darker fear 
 than that of the critic "before his eyes^' — 
 Death. 
 
 The decline of life is a sort of Calabrian soil, 
 ashy as well as tremulous, and success and 
 failure alike lose their intense effect under that 
 eternal looking-for. He can patiently await 
 critical insult or injustice, who knows that few 
 or none survive, of those for the sake of whose 
 opinion such insult would have been dis- 
 tressing. A prouder issue of his literary 
 adventure would perhaps not prove a happier 
 one. Total failure is perhaps not so painful as 
 the success that comes too late ; when the 
 hearts that hoped with us, and for us, so long 
 in vain, are in the earth, and the bitter self- 
 mocking "c^«^ bono ?'' — rises involuntarily from 
 the depth of the empty surviving heart, in the 
 Solitary — even though crowned beyond that 
 heart's hope — ^he feels that it is not within, that 
 pride turns for gratification, the social mind for 
 bliss. 
 
 To the dead, to the buried bosom-friend or 
 wife, the crowned hero is still uncrowned, and 
 the most popular poet still an obscure rhymer.
 
 PREFACE. 21 
 
 What he was when that companion left him 
 lonely on the earthy he is still and must be for 
 ever and ever. 
 
 Fortunate they who do not, in their latter days, live and die 
 among strangers. 
 
 Much here said does, doubtless, seem to dis- 
 countenance pubUshing at all. Yet curiosity 
 is as strong a principle within us, as vanity ; 
 irresistible when conjoined with it. If it was 
 praiseworthy in an antique Sage to satisfy this 
 craving even in his last hour, raising his sa- 
 pient head with all the weight of death thereon, 
 to inquire the topic of his friends' whisperings 
 together, perhaps it may be held excusable 
 for one, the least of a sage possible, to ask, even 
 at the eleventh hour, as idle a question, of the 
 Critical World— "Am I a Poet? "
 
 THE 
 
 MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 EPISTOLARY PROEM. 
 
 To Dr. Edward Hogg, London. 
 
 B , Brecknockshire, 
 
 ESTEEMED FRIEND, ^,^^7 ,^ ,,, 
 
 ' 2d'Jth Mo. 18 — . 
 
 I RETURN to your fine, fertile, tame, intoler- 
 able England no more ! Here, among the most 
 beautiful mountains, I purpose to take up my 
 abode, and make '' my everlasting mansion " 
 also, to speak in the language, not I hope acting 
 in the '^ latter spirit," of Timon. Should such, 
 however, be the sullen spirit of some world- 
 weary wight, of wounded mind, among thy ner- 
 vous patients, send him here by all means ; I 
 will promise him as perfect a solitude as his 
 spleen can desire. Let him but observe one 
 point ; that is, to come pennyless, and I stake 
 my life on it, he shall not suffer the least mo- 
 lestation in eating his root by himself, from the 
 intrusion of a living soul ; unless, indeed, he
 
 24 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 should, like the Athenian, turn up gold in dig- 
 ing for his dinner ; in which case I retract my 
 pledge ; for I have reason to think very highly 
 of the amiable sociability of the Welsh gentry. 
 There is, however, so little of that yellow root 
 (of all evil) above ground here, that there is no 
 great danger of finding it beneath. 
 
 In so ridiculous a preamble, thou wilt hardly 
 recognize the patient (still less the ^ Quaker ') 
 for whose depression you prescribed a visit to 
 or ramble in Wales. That I have been bene- 
 fited by following your advice, this levity may 
 serve to prove, equally with my resolution to 
 exceed the dose of your remedy, and wander 
 here, for ever, instead of for a summer. 
 
 I have also commenced fulfilling thy request 
 (which I am aware was but a further mental 
 recipe in disguise) to keep a sort of travelling 
 Diary for thy amusement ; to transmit any tra- 
 ditions of a curious nature I might pick up from 
 hoary chroniclers— any of those strange dramas 
 of real life, and village life, often romantic 
 beyond romance, which the obscurity of village 
 annals eternally secludes from popular notice. 
 You suggested also, that I should write some- 
 thing in the shape of a Tour, and I told you — 
 (mind, I perfectly remember that Thou art 
 not more than one man, when I use the plural
 
 PREFACE. 25 
 
 pronoun, and do not be puffed up therefore) — 
 I told thee that I would do no such thing — I 
 hated Tours (of Wales above all) — I hated 
 Tourists ; that they come to mountains as gen- 
 tlemen travellers ; " bring with them airs from^^ 
 the — hell I had almost said — of pestilent Lon- 
 don, and they attract fashionable travellers, all 
 on the hunt for those pastoral and peaceful 
 charms of landscape, which eternally keep 
 yielding up the ghost — losing the very essence 
 of their attractions at the mere presence of 
 their pursuers, and their frivolous retinue of 
 menial followers — the corruption of whose so- 
 ciety is strangely rapid among the simpler 
 Welsh folk. Wherein one may liken such 
 lovers of primitive life to the anatomists of 
 Pope's simile, who, 
 
 ** Following life in creatures they dissect, 
 Still lose it in the moment they detect." 
 
 All this and more I remarked then ; but I have 
 come to a sort of compromise between your 
 imposition of a task, and my aversion. What 
 if I try to mingle the Novel with the spirit of 
 a Tour, to print the zest of travelling and petty 
 adventures, in the "breach'' of mountains 
 almost meeting, the perils of the green bog, &c. ? 
 This mere spirit will amalgamate with such 
 narratives as Welsh domestic history is rich in ; 
 
 VOL. I. c
 
 26 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 nor will you fail to receive some portion of 
 that knowledge of the ^' natives^" which books 
 of travels teach, even from such gossiping and 
 little didactic method ; knowledge possibly not 
 the less pleasant for being only incidental. The 
 thought pleased me ; for I shall be glad to make 
 even a nominal return for that professional 
 *^ value received " from thee^ to which I owe 
 my being now seated on a fine sod, with a hil- 
 lock for my writing desk (on the bank of a 
 romantic river — Irvon), instead of sleeping 
 beneath one. What would your city doctors 
 say to receiving, instead of a hundred fees due, 
 a presentation copy of " The Mountain-Deca- 
 meron," or some such thing ? But thou hast 
 that contradiction and eccentricity in thee, that 
 whereas they (at least many very popular ones) 
 are impatient of one's complaints, and/br one's 
 fee; thou, Edvardus Aper, art, to a friend, 
 even to me — a Friend, in the habit of reversing 
 this order of things, by making the ^of and 
 the ^for' change places. At least, you evince 
 as earnest an anxiety for that fullness of state- 
 ment from your poor melancholy interlocutors 
 (and which, by the bye, is in itself a rehef that 
 no physician will restrict too severely, if a hu- 
 mane man), as your brethren evince for an end 
 of it, and the little golden epigrammatic point
 
 PREFACE. 27 
 
 that attends the close, and restores their good 
 humour. 
 
 I have no alternative then, but to keep accu- 
 mulating, day after day, these my paper fees. 
 Ten shall I present thee at a time ; but every 
 day will be expressly addressed to thee, as if 
 the post were daily to transmit my rural des- 
 patch. 
 
 But I have not depended on my solitary 
 excursions for matter of amusement. Chance 
 has thrown in my way a few persons very con- 
 genial to a pensive traveller's taste, and pre- 
 cisely the only kind that I could have borne 
 under my then frame of mind. 
 
 In the process of time's natural cure of grief, 
 there occurs a period, in which, after our sad 
 and sullen soul-estrangement from the world, 
 we grow weary of our drear selves, though yet 
 unreconciled to society. I think 1 had reached 
 this stage, when I fell in with two (at least) of 
 those unworldly characters whose habits are re- 
 tiring, if not a little misanthropical, and which 
 formed, to me, a grateful sort of medium be- 
 tween solitude and society, the gaiety of which 
 seems, to the mourner, an eternal insult to the 
 dead. To this I may add, that, in traversing 
 a country such as this, whose character is that 
 of the beautiful and gentler sublime, we find 
 C 2
 
 28 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON, 
 
 that green quietude of nature which inspires 
 only a fine romantic melancholy friendly to 
 philosophy, when we have some heart some- 
 where to repay us for the pain of sohtude^, and 
 open some time to the overflowing of ours — 
 inspiring something terribly different from phi- 
 losophy or romance,, when that time is never 
 to come^ — such heart never to open, — when 
 such inspirings, and such fuUness of feeling 
 may pass away untreasured, because there is 
 no living soul for which we care to treasure 
 them. When hope faints, and hearts sicken, 
 and enjoyment itself, no longer communicable, 
 languishes into pain, under an unshared exist- 
 ence, scenery does not lose its charm, but that 
 charm becomes a sort of fascination, tempting 
 the solitary to yet deeper solitude, even to the 
 turning away from mankind — thence to deeper 
 and deepest sadness, and insanity — the death of 
 mind. 
 
 Hence, I begin to hold it more than good 
 luck, even a sort of salvation, that I have fallen 
 in with the persons who are to be of your 
 company daily, if such be your pleasure, and I 
 should be able to mentally introduce them to 
 thee. The moodiness of one (by the way, one 
 of your profession, but an idler — a doctor of the 
 mountains) — the halcyon nature and kind-
 
 PREFACE 29 
 
 heartedness of another of them — the whimsical 
 conceits, odd ambition, and odder figure (I am 
 sure he will never read this profane Journal of 
 mine) of a third, a Cambrian reverend gentle- 
 man — all these keep parrying the deeper dead- 
 lier impression of these (now) mournful moun- 
 tains, and converting many a source of deepest 
 and darkest thinking into the gay and super- 
 ficial play of thoughts. 
 
 Now, as to the travelling part of my Diary, 
 distinct from the story-telling — I can truly 
 assure thee that there is matter in abundance 
 for rational curiosity, left in Wales, and, what is 
 better, strong vestiges of what we may surely 
 characterise as patriarchal life, if life as rudely 
 simple, yet happy, as that recorded of very 
 early times may be so designated. The se- 
 cluded Welsh breeder of sheep and tender of 
 cattle, leads a life of solitary wildness truly cu- 
 rious to the curious in man^s nature — one of 
 pastoral peace, if not pastoral vagrancy, that 
 leaves little to the imagination to fill up for 
 that of an ancient man of woolly wealth, or a 
 modern one among the Bedouin Arabs. 
 
 When you read of the picture of primitive 
 modes of even Cambrian life being now wholly 
 lost, of MacAdam and the schoolmaster having 
 swept both Ignorance and Pastoral in their pri-
 
 30 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 mitive character out of Britain^ you may, I am 
 very sorry and happy to say^ suspend your 
 belief. Tourists — bookmakers I mean^ — follow 
 the routes of predecessors^ and see with their 
 eyes, and nothing beyond ; thence I believe it 
 is that so little is known of the domestic lives 
 and characters of the direct descendants of the 
 Britons, our fellow countrymen. 
 
 Persons accustomed to consider a corrupt 
 metropolis as the chief stage of high adventure 
 in the range of the stormy passions, and a pas- 
 toral region, such as Wales, as that of rural 
 innocence, or minor and rustic offences only, 
 would feel some surprise at the character of 
 many events occurring in the most peaceful 
 districts of the mountains. Nor are wanting 
 instances of a gloomy and intense character in 
 many incidentally or directly divulged at our 
 criminal bar. Light as is the Welsh calendar 
 (to the high honour of the people) in the num- 
 ber of criminals (a maiden assize, as all must re- 
 member, being no unfrequent occurrence in both 
 North and South Wales), yet, in the dye of the 
 crime, emphatically speaking, when such does spot 
 this general fair fame of the Principality, there 
 is a deeper shade than marks the average of 
 crime in England, or wherever the many diver- 
 sions of minds and hearts into multiform modes
 
 PREFACE. 31 
 
 of selfishness^ soften down the moral surface of 
 the commonplace society into one level of wider 
 but less deep depravity. Certain it is, that 
 at intervals (the interim being beautifully void 
 of almost all offence), there stands, startling 
 the general gentle spirit of a pastoral people, at 
 the bar of justice, some tremendous culprit, 
 morally grim all over in black and blood. The 
 circumstances rising dismal to light, as each 
 shuddering witness diffuses his. own awed and 
 tremulous solemnity of feeling over the whole 
 court, death^ilent in expectation, are of such 
 a nature as transports the cultured listener's 
 mind to lands very different to the rustic 
 Wales of his previous ideas, to those where 
 live 
 
 ** Souls made of fire, and children of the sun." 
 
 He is astonished on recalling his thought to 
 what is present, to see at the bar on trial of life 
 or death, a rustic, a mere real shepherd ! a 
 man whose outer life is all calm and monotony, 
 but his inward a very hurricane of passions. 
 
 Now, odd as it may be, the reading of these 
 narratives, involving much of these impas- 
 sioned traits of character, though not presented 
 in such horrible aspects of retribution as trials 
 or executions, seems nowhere more interesting 
 to me, than when resorted to in the deep repose
 
 32 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 of summer twilight, and the vacancy of a sort of 
 gypsy-iourney in which thy patient is now en- 
 gaged. Perhaps the contrast pleases. I am 
 sure that the sylvan calm and beauty of our 
 chosen spots where we pitch our tents (yea_, our 
 tents ; though we tell no fortunes, nor think or 
 fear for our own) — I say the glow of a June sun- 
 set, on a mountain side or river dale, derives a 
 double charm from such deep plungings into 
 the abyss of human hearts. Divine Nature and 
 
 Man — (who shall fill up that hiatus 
 
 with a fitting epithet?) set ofT each other in 
 strongest relief. It is Like finding, as we often 
 do, among the ruins of some abbey yellowed by 
 sunset and rich in all the pompous yet soothing 
 colouring of autumn, a brambled pit, full 
 of toads ! dangerous with snakes, and only 
 verdant with the ' deadly nightshade,* only 
 flowery with the poison of the foxglove ! How 
 pleasant, after spying down into its damp hor- 
 ror, to look round again at the sweet mellow 
 landscape, as the sun looks its last over the 
 sheepwalk ridge, and that monastic ruin itself 
 gives half its charm (notwithstanding that ugly 
 hole) with its mockery of windows, to that 
 placid whole ! Such is a peep into the heart of 
 man in the midst of pensive contemplations 
 of nature.
 
 PREFACE. 33 
 
 Such then being the kind of entertainment 
 which for ten days T propose to provide for 
 thee, I shall first ask, Art thou willing to take a 
 cup of tea and a tale with us under some ^^ ro- 
 mantic mountain forest-crowned '' ? To sit at 
 our tent's mouth on some sunshiny sod, be- 
 twixt a hanging wood and water, " far from the 
 haunts of men " (yet peradventure busier with 
 man than ever), sung to by the woodlark or 
 cuckoo, or plained to by the owl, possibly ? for 
 our odd amateur-gypsy the Doctor, is fond of 
 reading on into the night, by a very bright 
 moon, or his little lamp when the night is sultry 
 and still. If possible I will make you our 
 guest, without endangering you by night air, or 
 bivouac, or dewy greensward, by remitting you 
 the very feeling of the hour, at the hour, by 
 putting forth my writing tools, even by that 
 lamp if day's be "burned out/' (My own health 
 has vastly improved under this novel regimen.) 
 Although weeks or months may elapse before 
 you receive these my dispatches, " written on 
 the field " — of flowers, not of blood — still I pre- 
 fer penning them on the spur of the occasion — 
 (the spur of the scenic and pictorial beauty of 
 landscape) to writing from mere cold recollec- 
 tion when the glow of the moment is gone for 
 ever. 
 
 c5
 
 34 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 Moreover^ be not surprised, if, after my 
 taking leave of thee at night in this my most 
 disorderly Diary, you find me (or us) by the 
 place I date from next morning, to have taken 
 a miraculous night journey, too long for aught 
 but seven-leagued boots or the Chapel of Lo- 
 retto to perform. Understand, in explanation, 
 that this next day in the journal is not our next 
 day, but the first agreable next day, as I shall 
 observe the plan of selection both in the ro- 
 mances and our daily travels. We shall have 
 stages dreary as well as pleasant ; and our story- 
 teller, the Doctor, will have his intolerable tales 
 as well as his tolerable. These unhappy stages 
 or prosing tales, which I must suffer myself — far 
 be it from me to inflict on thee. Hence my 
 Diary will be any thing rather than one of ten 
 continuous days. For example, I date this from 
 the vicinity of the conflux of the Wye and Ir- 
 von, a grotesque nook of the latter near the end 
 of its course, full of rocky ledges, making it a 
 grand and rude channel, down which its whit- 
 ening* waters foam, and roar and tumble very 
 nobly — but our travels will begin in North 
 Wales. 
 
 Heavens ! what a luxury of pure and inno- 
 cent thoughts — what a sabbath of rest from all 
 troublous, anxious, wicked, or overwrought
 
 PREFACE. 35 
 
 feelings — what a delicious disdain of the whole 
 world and its little selfish doings on the outside 
 of our mighty green walls, starred with the lone 
 taper of the cottage by night, beautified with its 
 lone curling smoke-wreath, and the dim white 
 lambs of its owner by day — what a self-hugging 
 glorious contempt of Time (the old crabbed task- 
 master of mankind) — let him and his officious 
 gnomon point where they will, to midnoon or 
 midnight — what a fine rapture of peace and 
 goodwill towards men, yea, beasts, trees, rep- 
 tiles, comes like an angelic resurrection from a 
 grave over one^s whole nature, in such scenes as 
 I have been enjoying, turning a bad man into a 
 penitent, and a good one into an angel, for the 
 hour ! such blessed, blue, clear, all-innocent, be- 
 atified hour of paradise restored ! 
 
 But now for the Itineris PERSONiE ! (I 
 love dramatic doings.) 1. Myself. 2. Major 
 R****:^** 3. Rev. Ezekiel Evans. 4. Dr. 
 * * * *, a physician of the mountains, commonly 
 called ^^ The Rural Doctor " in his own neigh- 
 bourhood (that is his winter hiding-place, his 
 home being the air and the mountain top). 
 
 To these I must, after my own oblique per- 
 haps crab-like fashion, introduce thee. So first 
 — welcome thou personified Goodnature, ex-
 
 36 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 cellent Major R. of the village of , on the 
 
 river T * * * ! 
 
 Here is a soldier, a scholar, and a gentleman, 
 became a poor angler for conscience sake, the 
 best of Christians, a natural Christian, in his 
 abhorrence of his bloody occupation 1 He threw 
 up his commission in disgust, after distinguish- 
 ing himself for bravery in the Peninsular war. 
 The fact will cause my Major to be recognised, 
 perhaps, by some of his old companions in 
 arms, should they ever read this. Let them 
 enjoy their promotions ; he has Ms in that 
 pure Court where stars and orders have no 
 currency — ^an innocent bosom, and bloodless 
 conscience. With a stature of six feet three, 
 a fine sunburnt countenance, beaming perfect 
 content and benignity, though touched, in the 
 least degree, with the pensive, combining in his 
 proper person the grace and gallant manner 
 (though subdued) ot the former soldier, the 
 mindliness of the former scholar, (for his college 
 learning doubtless does not survive entire, after 
 his many changes of life,) the gentleness of a 
 most halcyon nervous system and temper, he 
 adds to all these a singular bashfulness, and a 
 simplicity quite childlike, yet not weak, de- 
 rived, no doubt, from his long exclusive inter- 
 course with the most rustic, yet most pleasing.
 
 PREFACE. 37 
 
 portion of the Welch people^ — the retired 
 sheep-breeders among the mountains. These 
 odd combinations make up a perfect unique of 
 character, to me extremely delightful. He 
 knows almost every old oak-root, and every 
 dark pool, and every bright silvery shallow, 
 bubbling by some antique bridge, of every river 
 in Wales. Scarcely an old green thatched farm 
 shews its blue smoke in the still noon, on any 
 wild slope overlooking the course of a river, 
 but he tells you, " There I was benighted, and 
 ^ they took me in ' : " and he tries to recall the 
 names of every one of the little wild laughing 
 family that he romped with at sunrise next 
 morning, in their patch of wild meadow ground^ 
 and rarely forgets one. Indeed, he always re- 
 news his visits on such occasions, with a great 
 basket of fish, and something for every child 
 there including the mother, for all are children ; 
 and his own happy disposition, as does their 
 exclusion from worldly cares, makes him one, 
 in all that adorns and sweetens childhood. 
 Hence he has a sort of general intimacy with 
 this happy people; a very "wide circle of 
 acquaintance." It is delightful to see two or 
 three barefoot little beings, fresh as morning, 
 and shy and wild as deer, the genuine moun- 
 tain-born, hurrying towards us, and hanging on
 
 38 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 the hands of so noble a figure (whatever its 
 envelope) as our Major's^ each forgetting his 
 shyness^ and asking a toss in his arms, or in- 
 vading his pockets for gingerbread or a fish. 
 
 Owing to this mode of life, he has acquired 
 the habits of the mountaineers, men who hav- 
 ing nothing to cloak, and no part to act, throw 
 themselves open to a stranger at once, and 
 expect the same from him. Hence he often 
 startles a worldly man by questions such as 
 children only ask, but men in a less artificial 
 state of society might rationally ask also. 
 '^ How old are you, sir?" or, "Did you retire 
 from the world for pleasure; or from disap- 
 pointment, embarrassment, or" — These may 
 serve to exemplify this species of oddity in 
 him. 
 
 As to his externals, these — (always excejot- 
 ing his undisguisable nobleness of front, ex- 
 panse of fair brow, and blue benignity of eye) — 
 by no means indicate the officer or fashionable 
 man; so that none could detect the gallant 
 soldier in the bronzed and wandering solitary 
 of the river-banks, often homeless for a month 
 together, his night-watch on the tented field 
 exchanged for a bivouac in a hollow oak, and 
 the innocent "field" where daisies, and such 
 families of flowers only, live and die, not the
 
 PREFACE. 3^9 
 
 dark-hinting llysau gwaed gwyr — the ^' plants 
 of the blood of man/** 
 
 Indeed^ with his worn fishing-jacket^ (over 
 which he now and then wears his belt and long 
 disused sword, mirabile dictu! alas for the 
 weakness of the wise ! ) tanned face, shapeless 
 straw hat, huge pockets stuffed with materials 
 for long piscatory campaigns, with gentles and 
 half-finished flies, cock-feathers, maggots, and 
 a little dirt to nourish them, escaping through 
 a box full of holes, and " remainder biscuits '* 
 left since last month's travel, marbles, and 
 nuts, and penny books for his " many friends," 
 — not omitting some soiled classic miniature 
 volume at the bottom of all — I say, with this 
 budgetting upper garb, and his huge Dutch 
 trowsers, become stratified in colours by his 
 various heights of standing in various-coloured 
 turbid rivers, in salmon-fishing, marked like a 
 post at a ford, added to a certain "fish-like 
 smelly" " a villainous compound," now and 
 then exhaling from said pockets, &c. &c. our 
 poor Major would appear something of a mon- 
 ster to the gay promenaders of a sea-side 
 "Terrace'^ or "Parade" at a watering-place. 
 
 * This plant, found in certain parts of Wales, derives its 
 name from the belief that wherever it grows the ground has 
 been moistened with human carnage, in battle or murder.
 
 40 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 Very rarely, he is to be seen for a few minutes 
 in such place at unfashionable hour ; but like a 
 ghost at cock-crow, or some great and strange 
 marine creature, come to bask on a sunny coast 
 rock, for a few minutes, then replunging into 
 its element, so our Major is instantly "seen 
 no more for ever,'* — gone back to the wild 
 green privacy of that river's course, which has 
 led him thus, for one peep, up to its gay and 
 thronged embouchure, the Ystwith, or Dovey, 
 or Wye. 
 
 No — he does not look the gentleman, cer- 
 tainly ; but who can forget the cause ? / — as 
 a Friend — one of a faith plighted against war, 
 last of any one ; but neither ought any Chris- 
 tian to forget. Should you, my doctor and my 
 friend, ever come hither, and espy such gro- 
 tesque figure standing by some stream, com- 
 posed as one of the river-side tree-trunks 
 shivering with ivy, I entreat thee to remember 
 why he is a " man of the woods," instead of a 
 man of blood ; and that if, in his exterior, he 
 does not resemble " the gentleman,^' it is only 
 because internally, in his love of mankind, his 
 pity for man's madness, his hatred of war, his 
 self-sacrifice in that holy cause, — he more re- 
 sembles him who died to found a religion of 
 peace, which says, " Thou shalt not kill ! " —
 
 PREFACE. 41 
 
 Him whom Decker, quaintly, but not profanely, 
 has called, '^ the first true gentleman that ever 
 lived!" 
 
 Another of our motley group is the Rev. 
 Ezekiel Evans, a young Welsh clergyman, a 
 somewhat comical graft of orthodoxy on metho- 
 dism — I mean that he grew into a youth, as a 
 frequenter of the lowest kind of conventicle 
 under an extravagant fisty performer on the 
 '^ drum ecclesiastic,'' and was then " put out,'* 
 through a short noviciate in one of the Welsh 
 colleges (till lately the chief channel to orders) 
 to the church — that church which had been the 
 scoff of his boyhood, under the nickname of 
 the ^^ steeple house/' A frequent species this* 
 of transmutation of faith in the clergy, not to 
 be approved, but inevitable where, as in so 
 many instances, the poor parents of such boy 
 are zealous Dissenters, yet induced by interest 
 to secure for their son a support in the service 
 of that church which they do not approve. 
 Hence arises that sort of compromise pre- 
 served, not without a struggle, between the 
 professed orthodoxy and the still well-beloved 
 heterodoxy, visible in many South-Wallian 
 clergy. A wag might be wicked enough to 
 hint that many of them carry orthodoxy in the 
 pocket and heterodoxy in the heart. Our
 
 42 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 small pale friend is an example of this to excess. 
 He is an adorer of Wesley^s memory — nay, the 
 humbler " Jupiter Tonans" of his poor parents' 
 wild village, is fondly remembered, and even 
 imitated. Ezekiel tries at a deep ^^ hem,'' like 
 the '^Minister of the GospeP" his boyhood 
 trembled at, and his mother cried and jumped 
 at ; he aifects his heavy step (I learn he was a 
 huge beef-faced " oily man of God,'' a grazier, 
 with lungs like a forge-beUows) ; his ordained 
 deserter, yet follower, even tries at his pious 
 beUow, and with his little fist he does good 
 execution on the pulpit ; but as for the rest of 
 the performance, he being lame from a stunted 
 leg, white-faced, and his voice no more terrible 
 than a penny trumpet, 'tis but a poor imitation 
 after all. He does his best, however, to be 
 Evangelical. He cuts his dark hair formally 
 straight across, close down upon his little eyes, 
 is rather apt to look grave at the most inno- 
 cent mirth, and sigh for nothing at all ; and in 
 his pulpit nobly rebuts Pope's sneer about 
 ^' never mentioning hell to ears pohte,^' by 
 mentioning nothing else. 
 
 One might fancy he had " lisped in" Scrip- 
 ture, as Pope did in verse, so biblical is his 
 common talk ; and that he thought to uphold 
 our reverence for the Sacred Volume by using
 
 PREFACE. 43 
 
 it as a slang dictionary. Your future acquaint- 
 ance the Doctor^ who detests that trick of the 
 Evangelical, and never turns away from any 
 wickedness of whim that he hath permitted, 
 once asked him if he "would not like to see the 
 day when all other phrases should be forbidden 
 than those of the Bible; when lovers shall 
 whisper in the dark about the mystery of the 
 Trinity, or grow warm, as they chat on the style 
 by moonlight, on the subject of the fires in 
 Smithfield ? How edifying to overhear mer- 
 chants on change interlarding talk of the rise 
 and fall of stocks, with little episodes about 
 the fall of man, or rising of the deluge ! '' 
 
 Be it told, however, that Ezekiel (the parson 
 I shall call him, for I love old-fashioned 
 English) is an excellent son. This trait covers 
 a multitude of ridiculous ones, in our eyes ; in 
 truth, out of this very virtue, so worthy of 
 admiration, grows the wildest and absurdest 
 of them all ! So apt is the very richness of 
 the soil of the human heart to put forth the 
 rankest growths ! His mother being what is 
 called a most serious woman, she frets at her 
 only son's being without the pale of her only 
 saving communion, not one of the elect ; and 
 her half-repentant son almost hates the bread 
 he receives in shape of tithe from a little living.
 
 44 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 because it precludes field preaching. Mean- 
 while^ he lives on^ in hope of that luxury yet — 
 of becoming a wandering Wesley ; of cheering 
 his mother's heart and his own, by drawing a 
 huge mob of the elect round her green-topped 
 farm hovel^ yet, on some Sabbath-day eve, 
 without the fear of the Bishop before his eyes ; 
 that is to say, when he shall have thrown oiF 
 the burthen of his living, on the profits of — 
 certain ^^ Sacred Poems," which he is hunting 
 subscribers for ! and whence arose the happy 
 addition of this whimsical character to our party. 
 Yet who can laugh at the filial feature in this 
 wild dream? How inseparably woven in are 
 the black yarn and the motley — the colours of 
 sin and folly— with the white, in our web of 
 life ! . Conceit, a little ingratitude to the Dis- 
 poser of human affairs, ignorant discontent, 
 bad faith as a priest, and — the love of a son ! — 
 a beautiful flower, with its dirty roots in the 
 air alone visible ! For I must add that his real 
 love for a mother is the only merit of his that 
 our friend allows to lie hidden ; and this because 
 she is a poor woman. Hence he keeps it as 
 profound a secret that he devotes half his (dis- 
 tasteful) revenues to her support, as if he robbed 
 her as regularly ; but " murder will out ; " so 
 he has been detected. When I add that he is
 
 PREFACE. 45 
 
 rather deaf, and loves flattery and fame and 
 good fare, extremely, I think you will be ac- 
 quainted with him. 
 
 My other fellow traveller, and the leader and 
 originator of our pilgrimage, is the last I have 
 to notice, and shall not long detain us, as his 
 character will, I suppose, unfold itself hereafter. 
 It is sufficiently enigmatical to me at present. 
 As it is always pleasant, however, to pick up a 
 little sly foreknowledge of those we are going 
 to meet, I may here remark that he seems to 
 be a man whose mind may rather be said to com- 
 mand him, by some morbid process through 
 which it is become independent on his will, than 
 he can be said to possess and command his mind. 
 Perhaps I mean his mental impulses — perhaps 
 I don't know what I mean precisely. No mat- 
 ter. Do you study this human enigma, as I 
 bring you better acquainted. Among other 
 oddities, he has that of a bitter disappointment 
 in literature. ^^ What has he published ? " you 
 inquire. Nothing ! " How then ? Beaten in 
 the race, and never has run ? " Oh, but he 
 declares that there is no longer such a thing as 
 Fame in England, so the prize is gone : there's 
 no ^^ Plate " to run for ! that Fame now means a 
 week's or month's mention of your name or 
 book among the authors '' of the Day " — a very
 
 46 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 correct expression. That where the "world^" 
 reads for novelty only^ fighting for its favour 
 is like the gladiator's fight, the issue certain 
 death ; for the next work published must be 
 the conqueror, because it wiU inevitably be the 
 newer. I leave these matters. But he has 
 suffered more decided disappointments than 
 this equivocal one, I presume, by deaths of 
 friends and other events, which have driven 
 him, long ago, to seek out, as he says, ^^ a bye- 
 lane '" to death, with its cool green footing, 
 instead of the noisy highway to the "dark inn," 
 and finds peace, if it can be attained, the best 
 ambition. His soul sickened at all the world 
 calls success in life, beyond the humblest sup- 
 port of life. In his own profession, a soundless 
 gallop on the mountain-top sod, in a moonlight 
 midnight, had more attraction for him than the 
 city glories of his brethren, he composing (for 
 he has the lyrical fury on him sometimes) to 
 the " rumble^' of the thundering cataract, more 
 willingly than to that of " chariot wheels.'* 
 So, for the present, fare thee well !
 
 THE 
 MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 FIRST DAY. 
 
 ARGUMENT. 
 
 The Quaker traveller who wrote the preceding epistle, 
 remits to his London correspondent, an account of an addi- 
 tional fellow-traveller ; also one from the latter' s budget of 
 Cambro -British romantic tales. 
 
 MORNING. 
 From our Island of the Estuary of the Tract h Bach- 
 Merionethshire. 
 
 Whoever follows the road from Harlech to 
 Beddgellert, and the region of Snowdonia, 
 comes^ at about three miles distance, to the 
 solitary shore of a noble estuary formed by the 
 mouth of the river Dyrrwhyd^ where it expands 
 into sea, after washing the bases of green and 
 pastoral mountains, and precipices with forest 
 trees, and their almost vertical masses of shade. 
 
 Nothing in landscape can exceed the soft 
 beauty or the solemn grandeur of this intimate 
 intermixture of marine and home scenery; of 
 the peeping huts of shepherds, and the tower-
 
 48 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 ing sail of the adventurous merchant ship, 
 departing for distant shores^ — of the whole 
 '^ deep deep sea " on one hand, and on the 
 other the lessening, narrowing distance of the 
 river, hiding its diminished head under bower- 
 ing oaks, and approximating mountains ; these 
 last presenting the softest sunshiny green 
 slopes to the sun. There, this broad, brimming, 
 blue basin, like a bay of itself, which its con- 
 flux with ocean presents, shrinks into the 
 pastoral perspective of a gentle river running 
 up into rural haunts, a mere sky-blue open 
 brook, threading at low water the mid channel, 
 deserted by the sea, through which the Welsh 
 peasant-lover can wade on a bright Sunday to 
 meet a sweetheart. On each side, a marbled 
 expanse of the finest sands stretches away, yel- 
 lowing in the gold light of a summer morning. 
 No horrid depth of black mud (half smothering 
 you in imagination with its mere look), here 
 scowls, on the retrocession of the sea. 
 
 " The extent of these sands is great, and the 
 prospect of them horrible," quoth Lord Lyttel- 
 tdn. In storm and coming night-fall, I grant 
 it is ; but their effect, when seen by sun and 
 summer^s blue, joined to the noble green banks, 
 (those banks being sides of vast mountains) 
 and over-skimmed by snowy sea-gulls, is that
 
 FIRST DAY. 49 
 
 of a soft, solemn, beautiful repose, as far from 
 horror, as the calm of a sweet sleep is from the 
 grim grandeur of the sleep of death. 
 
 As we stand on the edge of the sea-river — 
 a crowd of mountain-tops is in lofty distance 
 before us, rolled up yet in a night of their own, 
 but grimly yielding to the broad morning laugh 
 of the whole sea firmament, of June-blue, and 
 a sun making that sea glister gloriously. The 
 brilliant dazzle of such an object as the whole 
 floor of the great deep, is relieved by the view 
 of several dim islands off the promontory of 
 Llynn, and the vision of a shore, the blueish 
 shadowy outline of one, more distant still. 
 
 But close beside us, all is home-felt beauty 
 — the little ferry house, the pattering of a sea 
 at play with real green banks, all that a quiet 
 eye can desire, to transmit a sympathetic quie- 
 tude to a heart at rest, in the way of scenery 
 is here, as if no such things as mountainous 
 waves, and wrecks, and cast-up dead, and exile 
 '' beyond the seas," were in this beautiful world ! 
 
 Meadows, a little marsh ground, the wild- 
 wood and greensw^ard heights just described, 
 lowing cows, bleating lambs, singing barefoot 
 girls among them all, and that smiling, heav- 
 ing, half sea, half river — are all that meet eye 
 or ear ! The depth of sands in the lane-like 
 
 VOL. I. D
 
 50 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMEROK. 
 
 road, adds to the charm. The little that there 
 is of agricultural " stir " in this part, is hence 
 performed almost without sound, the humble 
 pony team and yamboo, or sledge without 
 wheels for bringing in the hay harvest, all 
 moving as if hushed on purpose to avoid break- 
 ing the charming silence, leaving it to those 
 sounds only which add to its effect — the plain- 
 tive sea-birds^ crying, or more cheerful land 
 birds' song, coming from those retreating 
 heights of ancient woods. 
 
 Close to the water, indeed in it, stands a 
 decent '^ public " as we Welsh call an alehouse. 
 Though \\\Q folks are a little rude and ignorant, 
 their domicile makes amends for this. It is 
 very delicious, at the same time surprising, to 
 wake in this sort of amphibious abode, for, such 
 it is, the tide, when in, washing the walls, and 
 you looking down from your chamber-window 
 on — the sea ! Though you see it beating your 
 house walls like the ribs of a ship, however, if 
 the morning be calm all is gentle grandeur as 
 it patters like a lake, and you find your ship 
 stedfast, your cabin window visited by swal- 
 lows, adorned with eaves, and your ears regaled 
 with " earliest birds '' as sweetly as ever. No 
 barbarous bawling, whooping, creaking, or 
 rocking, nor pitch, nor tar, (nor Jack Tar,) is
 
 FIRST DAY. 51 
 
 there to horrify every sense of you — a landsman. 
 Instead, a merry shepherd is heard on the 
 breast of a mountain on the land side of your 
 Janus-faced ark, or girl calling cows, and larks 
 singing, and that (to me) pleasantest of simple 
 symphonies, the mingling sounds of many little 
 streams of milk into different milking vessels. 
 Meanwhile, there is reflected into your eyes 
 from some great green precipice of sunshiny 
 mountain, such a green-coloured, tender, gold 
 light, as assures you you cannot be at sea, 
 notwithstanding your catching the low yet 
 tremendous peal of the broad ocean's breaking 
 on the shore near at hand. 
 
 We were ferried over to a small island, of a 
 few acres extent, lying about a mile out in the 
 mid estuary, and found it a sort of epitome of 
 Wales (Inys Gyftan its name, I think), contain- 
 ing rock, wood, beach, sands, heath, cliff', in 
 miniature, and — one house, as grey and gro- 
 tesque as some anchorite's cell. Above it hung 
 a rock all ivy, and on its roof (green as the 
 ground) stood perched a goat (one of the few 
 surviving of that race in Wales). He put us in 
 mind, as he stood and wondered at us with his 
 beard tinged with dew-wet buttercups, that 
 " streamed like a meteor," et caetera — of Gray's 
 Bard ; for the fate of his race alUed him to that 
 D 2
 
 52 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 "^last minstrel." We climbed to the higher 
 ground — the "table land^^ of our isle^ and 
 while wading the heath and fern there — "What's 
 here ? " said the Major. A wreath of smoke 
 curled up, as if out of the ground before us. 
 But on reaching it we found that our level there 
 ended in a perpendicular wall of rock, and that 
 the smoke rose from a gipsy fire (or one of 
 gipsy fashion) at the base of this rock, where 
 a snug square of greensward afforded a pleasant 
 breakfasting place, walled in by crags on three 
 sides, and roofed with dog-roses, and a far pro- 
 jecting mass of ivy. A middle-aged man with 
 somewhat of the " rueful countenance " of La 
 Mancha's knight, lay idling with a book ; two 
 boys were busied with the fire, burning pale in 
 the sunshine ; the remains of a good breakfast 
 were on their white cloth; and cowslips lay 
 abundant round the solitary's seat, which the 
 boys had gathered for their father. 
 
 As we all peeped down through the ivy, we 
 saw his odd starts and gestures, his looks now 
 despairing and morose, now joyous, according 
 as he looked within his own mind, perhaps, 
 or without, on glorious nature. Sometimes he 
 tried to stare at the sun, as if he would look 
 back that electric rapture which its full laugh 
 seemed to wake through his frame, and his eye
 
 FIRST DAY. 53 
 
 rested on the perfect blue without a cloudy with 
 such expression of charmed intensity as a 
 lover^s does on a consenting mistress's face of 
 smiles and beamy eye. 
 
 ^' There 's a depth of — of — at least two inches 
 and a half of prime fat on that ham ! " Ezekiel 
 whispered to me. 
 
 This wanderer (we learned afterwards) had 
 come to the island in the preceding evening^s 
 fog^ and never dreamed of there being a house 
 on it. Neither had he suspicion of our having 
 been landed on the island, our ferryman having 
 put us on the opposite side of it, whither his 
 indolence had not allowed him yet to wander, 
 so that he was hugging himself in a sort of 
 Robinson Crusoe dream. 
 
 " He^s a monstrous fool. Sir ! '' our parson 
 whispered again, " at least that or a madman, 
 by his wild ways — and yet ! — to judge from his 
 providing such a breakfast — ^what taste ! what 
 
 foresight ! what '' '' Hush, hush ! '' 
 
 the Major murmured, for the recluse began 
 talking poetry to himself. He was certainly 
 stricken with the Muse's madness, or intoxica- 
 tion, or whatever we must call that fatal tem- 
 perament that so often acts to the heart, and 
 all the hopes and blisses nestling there in 
 youth, the part of the cuckoo's unfledged young
 
 54 THE MOUNTAIN -DECAMERON. 
 
 in the sparrow^s nest^ fatally admitted by the 
 foolish bird — admitted and nursed to the des- 
 truction of its natural offspring; that passion 
 pregnant with future curses (even to utter 
 waste of life, to madness, to violent deathc) 
 which so often leaves in the whole wasted 
 bosom of its wretched possessor nothing but its 
 worthless, melancholy self, to gnaw heart and 
 madden brain, without one atoning comfort ! 
 
 In each interval of his ecstatic extravagance 
 excited by the fine weather — in that " languid 
 pause '^ — ^his face became like that of another 
 man — and one on no good terms with the world 
 or life or man, and hardly Heaven; for something 
 of expression not detected in the visage of a uni- 
 formly good man, often passed like a cloud 
 over his ; not quite completing Milton's image 
 of "thrice changed with pale ire, envy, and 
 despair,^^ yet recalling to one's thought the idea 
 of that transfiguration of the fallen Spirit, about 
 to reconnoitre forbidden Paradise. Yet I was 
 pleased (while my companions ceased peeping 
 awhile) to watch the soothing influence of 
 childhood on a rugged nature, evinced in his 
 boyishness of glee as his younger son (a 
 little boy of fair complexion, with curly head, 
 and pleasing intelligence of look,) ran up from 
 time to time to chatter with the father, or
 
 FIRST DAY. 55 
 
 bring him more flowers, of which he seemed 
 insatiate in his desire. 
 
 The eflfect of that fair fresh face, and those 
 joyous eyes, looking at that sullen one, and 
 into those saddened eyes of the parent, was 
 like the purple of the glory-darting sun, just 
 surmounting a height, and peeping into a wood 
 of all cypress, lighting up its dark a little way, 
 in spite of its sable ceiling ; — the sweet smile 
 created its own likeness under the hanging 
 brow and scowl of the world-weary man, 
 despite his gloom of thoughts, keeping a night 
 in his depth of mind still. 
 
 Now be not impatient, my friend, or my 
 reader, of all this ! These little traits are the 
 lesser features of a mind with which you are 
 to travel, cheek by jowl, through three weary 
 stages — alias volumes. No otherwise can I 
 bring you acquainted with your fellow-traveller. 
 This, too, is the man who is to clothe in his 
 own language, many a Welsh tradition, and 
 some ^' passages " in his own lifers experience, 
 and some gleanings by sick beds' and by death 
 beds' sides, for your (and all the world's) 
 delectation. 
 
 Will you not chuse to know your host, to 
 see him as he is, in his fancied solitude, wholly 
 unstripped of the worldly mask, naked to
 
 56 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 Nature and his children, before you obey his 
 ^* Follow me ? " Directly or indirectly, I doubt 
 not, from his strong sociability of nature long 
 frozen up, that having now made us his com- 
 panions, he will disburthen his whole mind 
 and his whole heart to thee and us ; and what 
 a fine thing it is to pore over any cabinet 
 broken open, much more a human breast ! and 
 to see a man turned inside out, as children pry 
 into an opened watch ! 
 
 ^'^ I wish," said he, ^' to my heart, our whole 
 ramble Avere in one such island as this after 
 another ! No soul but ourselves upon it ! The 
 sun ! the sea ! the mountains ! and ourselves^ ! 
 
 * I am monarch of all I survey ! ' " 
 
 " Nobody but ourselves. Pa ? " said the two 
 boys at once. "Don^t you know there ^s a 
 house t'other side?" 
 
 "The devil! ?. house?'' 
 
 " Oh ah, and we forgot to tell you. As you lay 
 with your head rolled outside of our tent-cur- 
 tain, and your mouth wide open, just as it grew 
 light but thick of fog, there was an old woman^s 
 face so Avrinkled ! peeped down on you, through 
 that ivy overhead — we were so frightened ! '' 
 
 " Ten devils ! an old woman peeping down ? " 
 
 " Yes, Pa, just up there, look ! why, goodness !
 
 FIRST DAY. 57 
 
 if I did'nt think 1 saw some meris faces now, 
 pushing among the leaves!" 
 
 '^ Zounds ! boys, what next ? Men's faces ? 
 Oh, there's no reaching a sohtude, now, I 
 suppose, short of the North Pole and the 
 white bears — pack up, boys, pack up ! where's 
 the horse ? Gather the things — " 
 
 The boys at last recomforted the perturbed 
 recluse, by persuading him that the last triple 
 apparition was but their fancy. Then he 
 looked long in the younger boy's face, who 
 led him somewhere by the hand, to shew him 
 a bower of boughs they were making, in which 
 work he joined with glee and vigour, more 
 than he had, perhaps, ever experienced when 
 himself a boy. Yet he soon returned to his 
 lair, the green nook of rock, casting up a 
 gloomy jealous eye of distrust at the lofty 
 festoon of ivy, as if to reassure himself of no 
 one being there, we all three watching him all 
 the while. At last he seemed at ease, and we 
 heard him mutter ^^ Charles's birthday ! " 
 Anon, the poetic fit seemed upon him, and as 
 if he had been still holding the hand so lately 
 put into his, he began to recite these stanzas, 
 probably composed before that morning. He 
 has since given me a copy of them ; so I insert 
 them. 
 
 d5
 
 58 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 MY BOY S BIRTHDAY. 
 
 Instead of all, of soothing kind, 
 
 Vital to peace, in life's decline, 
 
 As blood to life — what do I find ? 
 
 This little hand in mine ! 
 Of all that under heaven's wide cope, 
 Seemed mine, by perjury of Hope, 
 What's left me, as to death I grope ? 
 
 Its blue sunshine ! 
 
 With nought to hope, yet much to fear, 
 
 In life's grim nightfall left to pine, 
 To earth — this rock ! — what chains me here ? 
 
 This hand, this hand of thine ! 
 This pleasing pain, this painful joy, 
 Which all unconsciously, dear boy. 
 
 Thou putt' St in mine. 
 
 And yet I want some other eye. 
 
 With mine to see thy soft ones shine ; 
 I want some other heart to sigh 
 
 And fear for thee, with mine ; 
 For God forbid this darksome mind, 
 Aad haunted heart should ever find 
 
 Fit mates in thine ! 
 
 Thou blest blue heaven! thou, playmate -friend I 
 
 My heart's sole anchorage are you ; 
 That blue will frown — that playtime end. 
 
 Then, comforter, adieu I 
 And oh, — death's ever ready dart I 
 Mortal, oh mortal, boy, thou art ; 
 Soon this warm hand — have comfort. Heart, 
 
 For thou art too I
 
 FIRST DAY. 59 
 
 Wearied of wandering here, a wretch, 
 
 WTien leaves lie dead, and foul floods rave, 
 When downwards my wild arms I stretch, 
 
 Impatient for a grave, — 
 Then think I on thy helpless plight. 
 My motherless 1 in shock'd affright. 
 Think on thee left an orphan quite. 
 And thou dost save ! 
 
 Hail! then, my treasure, safe to land 
 
 Through all the perils of a year ! 
 Still do I hold thee by this hand ? 
 
 Still healthful, and still here ? 
 Thanks, Heaven ! — this well-timed pulse and palm 
 So cool, shall be as sun and psalm. 
 To make one blessed Sabbath calm, 
 
 For me, my dear ! 
 
 So hand in hand, a little while, 
 
 We'll haunt the wild brooks, pick the flowers ; 
 What though mine be a hollow smile. 
 
 Not mine thy coming hours ? 
 Neither are my pains coming thine ; 
 Though soon divides thy path and mine. 
 Grief shall not blot this day's sunshine, 
 
 Howe'er fate lowers. 
 
 Yet go — ^with fitter playmates ** keep " 
 
 Thy birthday, with " feast," frolic, glee ; 
 The tears thou shalt not see me weep, 
 
 Are fittest " gifts " from me 
 This hand for me, that heart for those. 
 Mine, one sweet hour — theirs to-day's close 
 Hands, heart, and glee.
 
 60 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 Yet I '11 be with thee to the end, 
 
 Though lonely on some mountain heath, 
 Thy birthday with thy spirit spend, 
 
 As might mine after death, 
 Follow thee every where ; — Heaven send 
 For thee some more effectual friend. 
 To love, to cherish, to defend — 
 
 And take this breath ! 
 
 Soon after the conclusion of this sohloquising 
 poetic flight of the father^ we deputed the 
 courteous Major to introduce us all to this 
 wild man of the isle (and lord of it as he 
 thought), and in a short time we were all very 
 sociably mingled in conversation, enjoying the 
 pleasant lassitude of a hot day^s approach, 
 under shade of rock and thicket, and the imag- 
 inary coolness imparted by the sight and sound 
 of water all round us. Ezek^el was prevailed 
 on to taste the stranger's ham, and declared he 
 had ^*^ never tasted richer, mellower, fatter, in 
 short finer ! '' in all his born days, since the 
 time when he was a boy, and used to eat his 
 mother's, raw ! '^ That did beat it ! '^ 
 
 It was not long before I drew forth the fact 
 that our rural host (whose home is in Breck- 
 nockshire, at least his house of mason work, 
 his 5wmmer-house being the tent that we saw 
 lurking in a rock-rift, overhung by a tree,) has 
 a budget of little romances, founded on facts
 
 FIRST DAY. 61 
 
 chiefly, communicated to him in the remote 
 secluded hamlets where his pleasure rambles of 
 every summer lead him. Some of these he 
 had along with him, and he promised to pro- 
 cure from home others for our entertainment. 
 
 "Tales/^ he remarked, "have become so 
 hacknied a form of composition, that I once 
 thought of committing mine to the flames, not 
 to add to the plague of them which has been 
 overwhelming the land. But sagely reflecting, 
 I said to myself, what after all is the Iliad but 
 a ^tale' of a siege and a sacked city? what 
 are Macbeth, and Hamlet, but ^ tales ' told by 
 dialogue ? — what but ^ tales ' in verse or prose 
 are Paradise Lost, and Jack the Giant Killer?*' 
 
 Without more preamble then, imagine us, 
 (except the Major, who went at low water to 
 fish in the mid-channel river,) all listening to 
 the following Story.
 
 62 
 
 THE TRAGICAL PASSION 
 
 OF 
 
 MARMADUKE PAULL. 
 
 Diasbad mererit am gorchuyt heno, 
 Ac nim hawt gorluyt. 
 Diasbad mererit i ar van kaer, 
 Hyd ar Duw i dodir . 
 Gnawd gwedi traha tranc hir ! 
 
 The western wave shouts ** woe 1 " to me this night ! 
 
 My all of good now yields me no relief. 
 
 The western wave shouts above the rampart top ! 
 
 Up up to God it is proclaiming, 
 
 *' To insolent joy succeeds eternal ruin I " 
 
 Ancient Welch MS. by the hard Gwyddno ; date of 
 MS. 1100, and Translation. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 A YOUNG female in the first bloom of wo- 
 manhood^ with dark and languishing eyes^ 
 sensitive and somewhat melancholy counte- 
 nance, who should be seen to extend her neat 
 but unstudied person, day after day, on the 
 same sea-side crag, and watch the horizon of
 
 FIRST DAY. 63 
 
 sea for some sail, seeming fated never to bless 
 those expecting eyes — such an object would be 
 pronounced at once, a lover looking for a lover^s 
 return. 
 
 Such an object was to be seen, long ago, on 
 that solitary projection of the county of Carnar- 
 von, beyond the town of Conway, known by the 
 name of the Peninsula of the Creiddin, termi- 
 nating in two noble headlands, the Great and 
 Little Orme's Head ; the former that awful ma- 
 rine mountain head, which, when viewed from 
 the opposite side of the bay (Beaumaris), looks 
 cut oif quite from the land, so boldly does its 
 tremendous precipice, with its grand coast of 
 caverns below, abut upon the sea. But thi§ 
 Sappho of a mountain maid (for her expression 
 of countenance, at least, partook somewhat of 
 the character that classic recollections attach to 
 that poetess,) had never known a lover; all 
 her months, nay, years of weary watching were 
 all for a father — a father too, whom she had 
 never seen, who had never seen her ! Her 
 home was a wild cottage farm-house in that 
 maritime yet pastoral sohtude 5 for such it is, 
 as leading to no place or port, and not then en- 
 livened by even the few visitors connected with 
 a copper-mine, which has been since opened 
 near the extremity, but dedicated to pasturing 
 sheep and cattle, to which its prevailing features
 
 64 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 of treeless sod (though interspersed are some 
 very ancient woodsj render it suitable. 
 
 Her mother, the owner of that farm, was a 
 woman named Patdl, that being her second 
 husband's name, but constantly called by her 
 maiden name, that of Woolstoncraft, according 
 to common custom in many parts of Wales 
 even up to this day. The story of this woman, 
 called also " Alice, the Broken Heart,'^ was a 
 melancholy one. She was first married for 
 money-sake, when almost a child, by covetous 
 parents. When her old and odious husband 
 died, leaving the young and then beautiful 
 widow a competency, a long chronic ailment 
 withered her for years, the years when her 
 over-empassioned nature might have well met 
 suitable returns. Her charms were a little on 
 the wane when this long infirmity wholly left 
 her. Then it was, that being of the most loving 
 disposition, withal delicate of nerve, low spi- 
 rited, needing a husband in the most refined 
 sense (and, to speak truth, also in every less 
 spiritualized sense), she cast her eyes on a very 
 young man, too young for her future, though 
 not present age, named Marmaduke Paull, and 
 a marriage followed, in the few months of 
 which did poor Alice experience the all of 
 wedded, of living bliss, that she was fated to 
 ever know. Nor was even this brief period
 
 FIRST DAY. 65 
 
 unembittered. Alice had never been a mother. 
 With her former cruel and churlish invalid of a 
 husband, it had been her comfort not to be. 
 But the woman^s wish rose strong in her heart 
 when nature had found fair play as it were, and 
 every passion of woman sprung as new-born 
 then, and clung to this first- found dear object 
 with a sweet sort of voluptuous madness. And 
 now it became a mortification, a misery, that 
 she was not to present one so loved with one 
 image of himself. The impassioned woman 
 would whiten in the lips, bite them, suffer an 
 angry half-groan to escape them, when her 
 handsome and soft-hearted Marmaduke would 
 take some mother's baby out of her arms to 
 dandle in his own, he being passionately at- 
 tached to little children, and above all things 
 desirous to have a female one of his own. She 
 fancied his eye turned coldly upon herself and 
 her unoccupied bosom, a fair one though it 
 was, from that envied mother^s ; though Paull 
 was generous and gentle, and would conceal 
 (all he could) the wish which he knew it wrung 
 her heart not to gratify, yet he would sigh 
 involuntarily on these occasions, and the sigh 
 went to her heart. She had even been known 
 from such agitations, after a flood of tears, to fall 
 into hysterics. 
 
 But these lesser woes were soon swallowed
 
 66 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 up in one all-overwhelming. Paull had been 
 once to sea with an uncle^ and became liable to 
 serve in the navy. He was pressed one fine 
 evening while walking with her on the shore 
 close to Conwy. The unhappy woman fought 
 the whole pressgang; but her torments were 
 only sport to those ^^ gallant frank-hearted 
 Tars,'^ as we hear them called ; so poor Alice 
 was again a widow in that staters affliction. 
 She retired directly to a wild and melan- 
 choly farm (her own)^ within the mighty shadow 
 of the Great Orme^s Head^ to never more (as 
 she said in her wild woe) be out of reach of the 
 roar and spray and uproar of that sea which 
 was beating round her husband. 
 
 In fact, no place could be more fitted as a 
 retreat for melancholy madness, and even to 
 breed it, if that be possible, in an infant mind. 
 Here, it is time to premise that, within the na- 
 tural period, poor Alice's wish was (too late) 
 fulfilled, and she became a mother ; the child 
 was the Buth with whom this tale commenced. 
 There were indeed those who whispered that 
 this child was not her own ; but that having 
 heard once from him giving hope of his return, 
 she bribed a very poor couple across the bay, 
 to permit a child born to them a burthen and 
 unwelcome, to be secretly conveyed across the 
 few miles of sea by the old midwife and " cun-
 
 FIRST DAY. 67 
 
 ning woman*^ of the country, who frequented 
 both sides of the estuary of the river Conwy, 
 that she might meet her dear Marmaduke's 
 return with his long-cherished wish, and as he 
 would bless her with himself returned beyond 
 all other blessings, she too might in less de- 
 gree bless him with a beautiful babe, his ima- 
 gined own. However true this might be, 
 Marmaduke returned no more to deceitful or 
 real joy. The region she had chosen for 
 her abode (to return to the point we diverged 
 from) fostered her melancholy. The dead 
 there divide the narrow sea-washed green soil 
 with its few cultivators and their flocks; for 
 the land, consisting of successive conical hills 
 and hollows, is every where heaved into russet 
 hillocks (with occasional moss-grown earned- 
 dau or monumental heaps of stones become 
 verdant with turf), which denote the burial 
 places of the Britons. Numerous monastic 
 relics, ruins, and ancient vv^oods, also give their 
 fine solemnity to this unfrequented district. 
 A sea and cavernous coast of extreme danger, 
 reefs and furious currents and far-stretching 
 headlands, add a horror to the maritime land- 
 scape; while the occupation of the samphire- 
 gatherer, as described by the great Bard, here 
 seen in its most terrific shape (for the cliffs of 
 Llandudno Rock tower there tremendous)^
 
 68 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 heightens even the effect of that sea of danger 
 and that shore of wrecks. 
 
 As our younger heroine^ Ruth^ grew of age 
 to wander here alone^ and watch for that sail, 
 the never-dying hope of which seemed to keep 
 the dechning mother ahve, every thing seemed 
 to concur in surrounding the lone child with 
 mysteries and glooms. A strange dim, yet 
 more than dreamy remembrance, hung on her 
 mind, of her very first stage of memory. It 
 was that a very wretched and withered old 
 woman, repeatedly landed in a crazy and 
 foul little boat, rowed by but one man, and 
 hobbled up to her mother's dark stone house, 
 roofed with reeds or fern stalks, in the rock 
 shadows. That whenever she followed her in 
 (like a child, curious,) Alice always excluded her, 
 and was always in tears and great trouble. 
 That this tattered and fierceish old woman 
 would stop on the beach to gaze in her infant 
 face long together ; sometimes made an angry 
 groan or grunt at her, but once gave her a cake, 
 and kissed and cried over her. And besides 
 this, she had heard, or caught somehow, the 
 unaccountable impression that she was a mur- 
 deress — had killed a child ! 
 
 And now the lone and languishing woman's 
 beauty faded rapidly, consumed by a sort of 
 inward fire — a feeling that gnawed eternally.
 
 FIRST DAY. 69 
 
 not sensual^ yet so compounded of sentiment 
 and constitution genial to passion^ that she felt 
 to herself as one dead^ or rather entombed 
 alive^ while conscious of such a fine flame burn- 
 ing to waste in her soul. She lived wholly in 
 the past and on the past — the brief burning 
 little past of her conjugal happiness. The 
 flashing summer sunset that then shot in their 
 happy eyes^ dazzling across the sea^ or the 
 sober-flowered dry marsh which they walked 
 together^ embracing and embraced, was still all 
 the sun she saw; the gravest and poorest 
 flower of that russet marsh that they trod on 
 then, in those joyous moments, was beautiful 
 beyond roses — beyond whole Floras, that 
 ever had glowed in her eyes since — her ever 
 seaward eyes, that grew hollow while they 
 rolled over that sea in vain. That short space 
 was all her existence, and the long space since, 
 in which her little Ruth had grown into bloomy 
 womanhood, (while she still dreamed of the 
 dear father's returning to find a baby for his lip, 
 his kiss, and knee) ; that long lapse of time was 
 all only weeping and wishing — but sand drifts 
 and thunder -pealing of waves, the same rock 
 and shadow and treeless marsh, and one neglect- 
 ed child, playing in her eye, yet hardly living 
 in her heart, for want of \h2±otJier heart for which 
 her's might be said to eternally he a bleeding.
 
 70 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 Indeed, her neglect of the child, not harsh- 
 ness, was evident to all ; and only her sorrow 
 could account for the coldness she seemed to 
 feel towards so sweet a child — so affectionate a 
 daughter; herself, too, a woman of such ex- 
 treme capacity for tenderness — such empas- 
 sioned feeling. 
 
 It was nothing strange that the little girl 
 should, at the earliest age, begin to share that 
 despairing kind of expectation of the father's 
 return, which possessed the parent ; and weep, 
 when she wept for him, and fancy how fine a 
 form he had when she so painted him to the 
 girl grown bigger ; that she should learn to 
 live in perpetual waiting, as it were, for him 
 whose very bones, in all likelihood, had long 
 since mingled with that brine, till the very 
 despair of the withered wife became, in the 
 happier buoyant breast of the daughter, a 
 lively living hope. She would not despair, — 
 she hoped a father in every sail that specked 
 the background of cloud, or gleamed like a 
 mighty bird of snowy plumage in the closer 
 view of the green sea. 
 
 But when the decline of her only Jmown parent 
 became strikingly Adsible, — when her appetite 
 and powers failed her, and she walked with 
 difficulty over the larger stones of the beach, 
 and needed even the feeble support of Ruth,
 
 FIRST DAY. 
 
 71 
 
 the poor girl grew eager for that return which 
 seemed so hopeless^ to a degree unfelt before. 
 
 Alice had been accustomed to kindle a 
 beacon fire, in heavy fogs and dark weather, on 
 the dark greensward hill for the service of her 
 absent husband, should he, possibly, be making 
 homeward on that dangerous coast. The 
 child would sit or play by this melancholy 
 hopeless beacon for hours, with which the 
 forsaken woman mocked her own despair. She 
 pursued this wild fancy till Ruth was grown of 
 age to understand its purpose. When the mo- 
 ther grew weary of the dream, and no longer 
 busied herself with that beacon, which was 
 more connected with the wildness of despair 
 than hope, the girl often lit one alone, till the 
 few remote farm people began to whisper of 
 madness in both daughter and mother. 
 
 Every species of rustic divination which the 
 Welsh peasant girl resorts to for ascertaining 
 the future — a lover's visit, or a lover's secret 
 heart, — did this poor enthusiastic girl practise, 
 to penetrate a darker secret and more desired 
 return — the return of a father — the secret of 
 his life or death. 
 
 Perhaps her own strange loneliness made her 
 anxiety less wholly on her mother's account 
 than it might appear. The apathy of grief 
 long borne, and the abstraction of one living
 
 72 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 on memory alone, and the busy thinkings of a 
 despair that could not rest in a mourning for 
 the certain dead — all these had rendered 
 Alice anything but a fondling mother. To all 
 the child^s wants she attended as a duty, and 
 was too soft of heart to deny any of the few 
 means of amusement — but she seemed to 
 utterly /br^e^ all maternal blandishments. It 
 appeared as if the disappointment of her eager 
 longing to present the beautiful babe to her 
 husband, had shut up all her affections towards 
 it, and that she regarded her as some wayward 
 child does a toy when broken, whose useless 
 parts still glitter, but, as useless, only add to 
 its vexation by their beauty to the mere eye, 
 since its purpose is no more. She looked 
 drearily into the humid crystal of the young 
 girFs most feeling and all-expressing eye^ even 
 as that child looks with discontent at the 
 bubble-sphere it has blown from soap when 
 the day is all cloud, and it wants the sun 
 behind to burnish it with all the lines of the 
 rainbow, and the crystalline sky-blue for its 
 background, against which to mount so beau- 
 tifully ! The beauteous rising of the girl into 
 the bloom of her age so was saddened, and so 
 was disappointing to the mother's mourning 
 eye, for want of that other parent eye, which
 
 FIRST DAY. 73 
 
 was, indeed, to Alice her only blue heaven, 
 and the love that lit it up, her life's only sun. 
 One only associate beside that mother the 
 little girl had ever known, and him only for a 
 few weeks, — a young boy named William PauU, 
 nephew to Marmaduke, who went to sea very 
 young, and had seen her since but rarely. 
 
 It was, perhaps, a misfortune that Alice 
 Woolstoncraft had gained, by the bequest of 
 her first husband, — that old man to whom her 
 parents had sold her in marriage for his wealth, 
 {rustic wealth, at least,) a competence, or what 
 nearly spared her all exertions. It was the 
 dear price of her youthful happiness, and, 
 indeed, her after-peace; for it was the prior 
 revolted and loveless state of her passions, in 
 such a woman, bound to an infirm and brutal 
 clown, which, no doubt, gave such intensity to 
 her feehngs when their proper object was found, 
 though too late for perfect bliss of wedlock 
 without disparity. This competence encou- 
 raged that listlessness natural to deep grief, by 
 the want of all spur to exertions. 
 
 There was something in that solitary scene 
 of severe and simple grandeur — a naked, stern, 
 and melancholy magnificence, which (to assimi- 
 late the physical in landscape, and the imagi- 
 native in moral sentiment,) might be fancifully 
 compared to the ancient Greek Tragedy. Na- 
 
 VOL. I. E
 
 74 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 ture was all in all, and her features had no 
 smile. Let us sketch an evening view of it. 
 A dun-green marsh, rushy, dry, with a few 
 crags peeping pale through its treeless naked- 
 ness, formed the foreground. One or two 
 monastic ruins of ruins, the mere wreck of 
 what have been picturesque relics, are dimly 
 visible. Before was the open sea, with all its 
 sounds, and all its waves sunken into one 
 mighty moaning, and one restless floor — and 
 the sea-sky, with all its clouds clustering in 
 purple but lurid pomps round the great sun, 
 on the horizon^s edge. On one hand the 
 pyramidal headland of the Great Orme's Head, 
 on the other that of the Lesser Orme's, stood 
 like huge towers, reared by giants, to sentinel 
 eternally the majestic pass or gorge they form of 
 that marshland, with its few tomb-like colossal 
 stones and prostrate ruins. The only sound 
 was that immense one of the deep, made more 
 awful by the reverberation of the whole body 
 of the mountain of the Great Orme's Head, 
 which gave a distinct peal and roll in addition 
 to the breaking thunder of the sea. 
 
 In such a naked vast of prospect, whole fami- 
 lies and all their homes would hardly have 
 relieved that solitude. Dwarfed into moving 
 figures, and their houses into beaver huts or 
 molehills, under that mighty bulk and its
 
 FIRST DAY. 75 
 
 shadow, and beside that iUimitable dome and its 
 floor, they would have rather added to the solem- 
 nity. Much less did that one figure relieve it, 
 which this evening, placed just in apposition 
 with the now tempered glory of the sinking sun^s 
 dilated globe, gave to the eye it intercepted, (like 
 some figured spot in its disk,) the doubtful image 
 of a human form, diminished to a mere dust 
 atom. If the romance of the image was de- 
 stroyed on approach, by the discovery that this 
 imagined ^^ angel in the sun ^^ was no other than 
 our Ruth, a Welsh cottage girl reclining on a 
 knoll of rock, with dry sea- weed for a pillow, her 
 raven hair flying in wild grace, with some touch 
 of a poetie fire in that eye, albeit a humble 
 stocking from her mother's few sheep^s wool, 
 was growing on the knitting-needles in her 
 hand, which her taper fingers plied rapidly, 
 without a moment diverting her attention from 
 the dim speck in the distance that she fancied 
 into a sail — (yes ! a father's sail even yet ! ) 
 I say, whatever the scene lost in the illusion of 
 romance, it gained in interest, actual living in- 
 terest. It is an advantage of this general occu- 
 pation of our Welsh house-wives and children, 
 knitting, that it goes on mechanically, without 
 withdrawing the mind, or eye, or hmbs from 
 any other pursuit; the two hands only keep 
 E 2
 
 76 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 producing the useful commodity^ leaving the 
 mothers to walk^ fetch cows, talk, and quarrel, 
 the young to go errands, to learn reading, &c. 
 quite as if no stockings were on the stocks. 
 Then it is so clean a task ! the slender needles 
 so bright, and the growing clean woollen affair 
 so needful ! 
 
 It was on this evening of melancholy splen- 
 dour, which we have been describing, thus 
 sleeping in lurid crimson along the grand sort 
 of inverted arch of mighty span, formed by the 
 two great headlands, that Ruth was hastily sum- 
 moned home by a neighbour. She ran like a 
 wild fawn, her stockings and part of her attire 
 left on the rock slab ; she ran — and found her 
 mother dying ; who collecting her little breath, 
 addressed her with a smile, after kissing away 
 her incessant tears. Poor Ruth had rarely 
 known the touch of those mother-lips; and 
 now they were blueish, and ghastly, and her 
 eyes told that the hand of death was already 
 advanced between her and that parent. A.U re- 
 turn of tenderness had formerly been confined 
 to the sad woman's heart ; she had no more 
 the zest, no longer the active spirit of even 
 maternal love, enough alive within her to give 
 kiss for kiss, endearment for endearment. Now 
 she kissed and clasped her fervently, then said :
 
 FIRST DAY. 77 
 
 '^ I must leave you, poor child ! I feel my- 
 self going, going where I trust my Marmaduke 
 is long ago gone before me." 
 
 '^ Oh no ! my mother/^ poor Ruth broke 
 forth, sobbing, " he is not gone, live for him ! 
 live, and he will come again ! We will light our 
 fire again every dark nightfall. Don^t say he's 
 gone, and you are going, or I shall die before 
 you ! don't both leave me, pray don't ! oh dear • 
 oh my heart ! '' and she held her side, where it 
 seemed bursting from her bosom. 
 
 ^^ Good, dear girl,'' the faint woman pursued, 
 "though you think me unhappy in quitting 
 life, and though folks talk of dying as if it were 
 to fall asleep, and it were a dreadful sleep, 
 indeed, my dear, it's to me nothing dreadful, 
 but just Hke a waking. My life has been the 
 sleep, God knows ! My life has been the 
 dream, and Heaven forgive me for making 
 your's the same, poor child ! but you've a life 
 yet to come, I do hope ; yet I 'd rather see you 
 dead now than that it should be such a life as 
 it has pleased God to send me. I fear me if s 
 a crime to love as I 've done ; I 'm sure it has 
 cast me down into such despair, as must be 
 wicked, if we have any heart left to fight against 
 it : but what can a broken heart do ? Now I 
 see that I should have turned my eyes that
 
 78 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 couldn't sleepj and my heart that was never at 
 peace, and my arms that were ever ready to do 
 a desperate something, oh! not to that deaf 
 sea, not to that empty distance, not to a fooHsh 
 false figure on my brain, of my Marma- 
 duke, my dear! rocking on a masthead — oh 
 no ! but to the God that I almost grew wrath 
 against for dividing us 1 Oh, and was not my 
 God merciless to me to give the uttermost I 
 ever could wish for, in the way of passionate 
 love, only to take it away directly? only to 
 take him away ? Never could I, never did I 
 say, ^ Blessed be the name of the Lord ! '' 
 Therefore perhaps he refused me my dear Mar- 
 maduke back to these arms. — But I must 
 be short/' — ^Then she waited till the neighbour 
 who had fetched Ruth was gone, and at last 
 said, trembling all over — ^^ My poor poor Ruth ! 
 Yet not mine — '^ 
 
 " Not yoz^r^, my mother ? Not yours? Well- 
 a-day ! she's moythering,* oh ! let me fetch the 
 woman back." 
 
 "^ Stay, be quiet, child ; you are now sixteen 
 years old, I must not die in falsehood. — Ah 1 
 you '11 hate me and the memory of me now. 
 But what's love and what's hate to me, but 
 only Marmaduke's ? I am not your mother, ^^ 
 
 * "Moythering," delirious talking.
 
 FIRST DAY. 79 
 
 Ruth rolled her eyes in bewilderment^ through 
 tears^ turning death-pale, and muttering " Not 
 my mother ? '^ 
 
 ^' Hear me, my poor child ! I had prayed to 
 God to permit me to hold but one image of 
 my Marmaduke, and He would not ! I envied 
 the most destitute of mothers only for that they 
 were mothers ! I watched the soft eyes of my 
 Marmaduke, and thought how they would look 
 
 at me, on me, if Oh I shall live again, to go 
 
 mad ! I shall rouse myself from this death, that 
 I^ m as glad of as a poor creature long at sea is 
 of land, if I begin to remember again, to feel 
 afresh, and flutter all over again ! I was mad, 
 Ruth. My longing to meet him with an infant, 
 when he wrote to me about his coming back, 
 drove me into a scheme for deceiving him. But 
 never did he come back to be deceived ! but 
 my guilt was the same. I began to act my plot 
 and when that other woman^s time of trouble 
 came, by the aid of her nurse, we contrived to 
 make it believed her child was still-born, and 
 long before its time, while the old woman 
 brought you (you were the child) and nursed me 
 in my pretended lying-in. This old midwife 
 never betrayed our plot, and oh ! how I doated 
 on you, for nothing but the promise your little 
 helpless body afforded me of becoming all to
 
 80 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 my dear husband^ which other wives are to 
 theirs ! I tried to dream awake that you was 
 my own. How soon I taught you to say ^ Dad^ 
 dad ! ^ I ^m sure I trembled at thought of losing 
 you_, so as never mother did. But when you 
 grew so pretty and grew to -prattle so^ and one 
 trick came after another^ that I so wanted him 
 to see^ all came^ but he never came^ he never 
 saw them, and one by one was forgot; when 
 your little teeth shewed, and you began to go 
 alone, and he never watched these things with 
 me ; oh then, I began not to care for you, poor 
 darling ! for then I cared for nothing ; and so, 
 you know, you Ve grown and grown to a great 
 girl, a woman ! ha ! ha ! ha ! yes, youWe a fine 
 woman-figure now ! and what am I? An old 
 withered one, a wicked one ! But what matters ? 
 he'll never see me so, God wouldn't let him be 
 deceived ; God punished me, for never, never, 
 never more did Marmaduke come back ! But 
 mind, I charge you Ruth, I implore it, my dear, 
 if he do come back, dont tell him, don't make 
 me out a liar to him ! Swear you won't expose 
 me ! Let him pity me, let him come and plant 
 my grave ! Oh, Ruth ! " 
 
 '^ I swear I never will, my dear, dear mother ?* 
 Ruth sobbed distractedly. With one finger 
 raised towards Heaven, and the poor girl's face
 
 FIRST DAY. 81 
 
 on her panting bosom, Alice sunk back ; and 
 when Ruth, alarmed, raised her tearful face to 
 answer her more audibly, the dreadful eyes 
 were fixed upon hers, never to be veiled by 
 those moveless lids again, but by another's 
 hand. 
 
 £ 6
 
 82 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Now is there one to -whom I can express 
 
 My nature's weakness, and my soul's distress. 
 
 Crabbe. 
 
 Almost every person has met with coinci- 
 dences of events that would in fiction be pro- 
 nounced too improbable for belief. Of this^ 
 what is recorded to have occurred to the humble 
 persons of this traditionary tale^ to be imme- 
 diately mentioned, is an instance. On the 
 death of ^^ Alice, the Broken Heart," the wo- 
 man who attended to perform the last duties 
 to the dead, and protect the forsaken girl, (con- 
 founded into transient delirium by the disco- 
 very just made, and the appaUing stroke of 
 death, so instantly succeeding,) brought out, 
 according to Welsh custom, the straw which 
 formed part of the bed-furniture of the de- 
 ceased, and set it on fire before the cottage 
 door. This was designed as a signal of death 
 formerly in Wales, and practised as soon 
 as the breath had left the body. Those 
 masses of cloud which deepening round the 
 departure of the sun, had invested that 
 eventful evening with a melancholy gloom
 
 FIRST DAY. 83 
 
 of glory, had now deepened into darkness, and 
 lowered, (like a roof of blackness over some 
 vault of the dead, invaded by one torch, or a 
 sickly lamp) — over the scene, now given to the 
 view of those watching the dead, by that so- 
 lemn though feeble beacon, gleaming its short- 
 lived tale of death to the few eyes that might 
 be turned from land or from sea, towards the 
 foot of the Orme*s Head mountain, under which 
 lurked the home of the now solitary orphan. 
 
 The Gwylnos, or ^^ night of watching," which 
 succeeded this grim nightfall, was one of storm 
 and darkness. It may here be not impertinent 
 to remark that the practice oi watching a corpse 
 did not in Wales wholly originate in friendship, 
 and exist as a mere form, but was the result of 
 superstition, which apprehended mischief, if 
 not abduction, likely to be practised on the 
 dead, by evil spirits or witches, if strict watch 
 were not kept, and a light always burned. 
 
 The wild imaginative character which her 
 mode of life had formed in the solitary girl, 
 Ruth, gave impulse to her nerves, and a spirit 
 bold beyond the weakness of her sex and age, 
 on exciting occasions. She entreated to be the 
 sole watcher by her lost protector. The howl- 
 ing and rising wind almost extinguished the 
 two rushes, dipped in grease, which, fixed each
 
 84 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 in the small iron vice used to bear them about^ 
 stood on each side of the sheeted corpse ; the 
 cottage shook violently^ the echoes of the tre- 
 mendous falls of the broad sea^s sweep lashing 
 the rock beach on the seaward side of the Great 
 Orme, were like thunderclaps run into one 
 another ; and the real thunder of the sky^ (shut 
 up by clouds as by mighty folding doors hung 
 with mourning,) already came groaning from 
 the distance^ and the blueness of the lightning 
 made itseK seen within the room, spite of the 
 light within ; yet Ruth persevered in her desire 
 to watch alone, to have that last sad office all 
 her own^ and the women retired to rest^ not in 
 the house, but according to common usage even 
 at this day with the farmer^s servants in retired 
 pastoral districts, in summer at least, to a night^s 
 rest in the straw of the cowhouse, all the older 
 farm houses accommodating their cattle under 
 the same roof with the family, only divided by 
 a wall of rough stones. 
 
 The dead of night was now on the world, or 
 rather, in such solitude, on two mountains, their 
 double-figured blackness frowning out sudden 
 in the quiver of lightning, with its ghastly day 
 of a moment ; a sea running mountain high ; a 
 sea-lashed dismal beach ; and an upward cataract 
 of spray, that mounted halfway up the face of
 
 FIRST DAY. SB 
 
 the Orme^s Head precipice next the waves^ 
 and volatile as it had flown up on the wind's 
 wing, of steady force, as it blew a settled hurri- 
 cane, in falling thundered like whole waves that 
 had ridden air and broken against that wall of 
 crags, rather than the mere foam of that wave's 
 raging. The stir and uproar of the elements 
 without strangely contrasted with the everlast- 
 ing peace and the never-to-be-broken silence of 
 the mortality within. That form, so lately agi- 
 tated as those elements, so lately, even to the 
 last, trembling with the last convulsions of the 
 most powerful of the passions, the earthquake 
 of the heart — now lay still as a summer night, 
 when scarce a moth is heard flitting, a dull, 
 shape frightfully hinting its nature, by pro- 
 jecting features of face and limb, beneath a 
 sheet, the necessary veil between its metamor- 
 phosed self and its, so recently, fellow-beings, 
 — a perishing image of clay ; and all those ele- 
 ments of being, — those hopes, fears, wraths, 
 regrets, dotings, jealousies, which had raged 
 within that little vault of a bosom, as do thun- 
 der, lightning, wind, and hail, in that of our 
 visible heaven — all, all sunken into peace, and 
 no more left of the yearnings, the rapid out- 
 stretchings of the busy spirit, than remains of 
 its eager insect-hunting, and its flight out-
 
 86 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 stripping our sight, to the winter-stricken 
 bat, when it steals away to a ruinous tomb, 
 damp cleft in rock, or the depth of some dun- 
 geon in a tower* s ruin, and there hangs, with 
 hundreds more of its race, so stricken, a dull 
 mass to be handled without their feeling the 
 hand, not a wing stirred of so many swift ones, 
 a mere black appendage to such vault ! 
 
 Ruth, full of awful and sad thoughts, thus 
 ruminated: — "And I shall be some time — I 
 care not were it now — hke this dear, solemn — 
 something — Oh, is it possible ? is this not my 
 mother's corpse ? — yes, I will call it so — like 
 2/ot/, my mother, as now you are. Why should 
 I fear to raise the sheet ? She loved me, as 
 well as her poor distracted heart could love any 
 thing, dear soul ! she never hurt me while 
 living — ^why now ? — Yet I fear. — Like what you 
 are I shall be— shall I ever be like what you 
 have been ? Oh, I can feel what you have felt, 
 even by what I, a foolish child, feel towards a 
 father I never knew. Ah, my God ! what a 
 new world I have come into since this morn- 
 ing's sun rose on me ! My dear father beyond 
 that sea is not my father — I've been dreaming 
 of a stranger ! I Ve watched and wept, and lit 
 up my little watch fire, and thrown my silly 
 arms in my sleep, and dreamed I was sleeping
 
 FIRST DAY, 87 
 
 on his bosom, and he's not my father ! He is 
 not ? Who is not ? Oh mother, mother, you ve 
 made my mind hke this storm, and left me 
 alone, directly! Why do I say 'Mother?' 
 What a confusion ! I have no fear of storm, or 
 your poor pale death-look, or any thing, for I 
 wish I were hke you ! — How it howls ! Was 
 that the wind?'* 
 
 It was not the wind. She approached the 
 casement, and screamed at sight of a human 
 face, very pale, laid close to the panes, and then 
 two hands, lain open all about them, as of one 
 groping in blindness. It was a shipwrecked 
 man, who, having by miracle saved himself by 
 scrambhng along a ledge of the rocks, in the 
 retrocession of the waves, and cHnging, during 
 their assault, had groped his way round to the 
 land side of the Great Orme's Head, and directed 
 perhaps by voices to the house of death, was 
 now seeking the entrance. After her first sur- 
 prise, Ruth did not forget her nature so far as 
 to delay the dues of hospitaUty towards the 
 drenched, exhausted man, violently as her heart 
 beat and hmbs trembled. She opened the 
 door, but the wrecked man was turning the 
 contrary way, and she found that he was 
 bhnd, in addition to his other calamities. 
 Weatherbeaten, with hands wounded and
 
 68 THE MOUNTAIN^DECAMERON. 
 
 bleeding with the sharp rocks he had held by^ 
 and his face smeared with the blood his hands 
 had left there in throwing back his black hair, 
 that flew over his face in profusion, blown by 
 the wind; his voice shrill and piteous; his 
 whole appearance was terrific as a spectre, and 
 his feeble groping in darkness, added to its 
 piteous horror. Ruth shuddered at taking his 
 hand as humanity prompted, yet, looking in 
 his face, was surprised to catch a gUmpse of two 
 of the finest eyes that ever rolled, notwithstand- 
 ing their loss of sight. Lightning had so far 
 paralysed the optic nerve, as to nearly destroy 
 its function, without destroying that mysterious 
 power in the organ, by which it converses with 
 other eyes, in the universal language peculiar 
 to the human eye. She led him by his clay- 
 like hand to the fire, proposing to there leave 
 him while she roused the women in the cow- 
 house, when a dreadful embarrassment detained 
 her, about explaining to him the melancholy 
 task she was engaged in, for the apartment was 
 small, and with his groping to the least dis- 
 tance he would grasp the dead. She told him 
 distractedly the situation, and ran to call up 
 the women. 
 
 And there lay that impassioned, long-agi- 
 tated being who had dreamed and groaned out
 
 FIRST DAY. 89 
 
 life (a cold automaton with breath) for the sake 
 of that dear one, now^ in that extraordinary mo- 
 ment^ by such awful coincidence, returned to 
 her clay not to her, not to her warm heart 
 leaping towards him, nor her arms that would 
 have so grasped him ! She lay, and not a 
 pulse stirred at his presence, not a hand was 
 extended to his helplessness, as he felt about, 
 nor one sigh was left for the dear, dearest Mar- 
 maduke, the long-lost husband, shivering and 
 bleeding, a shipwrecked man, and the heaven 
 and the earth blotted to him, for ever ! Such 
 are human hopes, passions, prospects, and such 
 and so terrific in its change, is death ! He 
 was returned, but only as earth was opening ' 
 for the white ashes that alone remained of so 
 mighty a flame, as had consumed a heart, and 
 made it dust even before it ceased to palpitate, 
 antedating the work of death itself. 
 
 You, whoever you are, ^ nay you^ this weak 
 agitated seJf^ now plying this vain task of 
 painting passion in perishable pictures like this,' 
 read here the vanity of human wishes ! Per- 
 haps there is one heart, perhaps there are arms 
 which you are or were secretly considering your 
 future pillow, your future sure white sanctuary 
 from the last fury of that pursuing terror Death, 
 now almost upon you, already parleying with
 
 90 THE mountain.decame;ron. 
 
 Nature, for your forfeit body, and that Nature 
 but pleading faintly for a little grace, a little 
 more time — not happiness. Perhaps you have 
 tried that heart even by unkindness, and it 
 withstood the trial; those arms have been 
 slighted in the insolence of self-dependent 
 health and strength ; perhaps mutual faults have 
 almost made love a stranger in such hours, 
 though not departed, still your secret weakness 
 has been buoyed by a sleeping confidence that 
 yours are that heart, and yours those arms at 
 need. Trust not in that hope ! So Ahce hoped, 
 and there she died lonely ! (to her there was but 
 one being that made earth populous.) The sea 
 was her vicegerent Death, that tore her heart 
 alive : — but as terrible bafflers of human hopes 
 as that sea, lurk by thousands round us all. 
 She prayed, she panted for that man^s return ; 
 he returned, but in vain to her. You rest your 
 whole hope against a death of despair, on tried 
 affection, on purity, on something human. It 
 shall deceive you ! If not a confidence built on 
 Heaven, trust it not ! Wrecked, not on one voy- 
 age but the sea of life, when life's prospect is one 
 blot, when not hands but heart shall lie all bleed- 
 ing with the sharp rocks of that sea — then that 
 something, not of Heaven, in which was your 
 trust, shall fail you at the eleventh hour 1 fail
 
 FIRST DAY. 91 
 
 you when in the shadow of the valley of death ! 
 and that heart, that mind, and those arms prove 
 no more yours, and fruitless to you in your lone 
 struggle with death, as were those stiff arms of 
 Alice, or her congealed heart, to that wrecked, 
 blind, bleeding, and desolate man ! 
 
 An unseasonable contemplation ! 
 
 The mournful beacon formed of the flaming 
 death-bed of the ill-fated Alice, had effected 
 the purpose for which she had herself, for so 
 long a time, kindled fires in vain. The seamen 
 of the vessel which Marmaduke was on board, 
 were led by that little light to make for the 
 shallow bay formed by the two Orme's Heads, 
 but which they missed through the fury of the 
 gale, and drove on the Head itself. 
 
 Some time elapsed before the fact of this 
 extraordinary meeting with his supposed daugh- 
 ter' became known to Marmaduke. For the 
 women, with the light of morning, led him away 
 to a farm at some distance, and Ruth had small 
 impulse to converse during the night. More- 
 over, he was unacquainted with the Welsh 
 tongue, in which the women conversed. But 
 Ruth, sitting melancholy with eyes fixed on the 
 fire, after supplying the stranger's wants, had 
 time indifferently to observe that he was a 
 young-looking man ; his age was indeed such.
 
 92 THE MOUNTAIN DECAMERON. 
 
 he having married so early as would alone have 
 removed any thought^ if she had indulged such, 
 of this man's being her father — the father of 
 her imagination being old and venerable to her 
 mind's eye. The blindness not being total, 
 left expression in the wayworn man's ruined 
 orbs, to second the thanks for the young wo- 
 man's anxious attentions, which his words not 
 inelegantly expressed. 
 
 Strange and powerful were the many emo- 
 tions of this young girl's mind, when, after 
 some time, the women led back the eager 
 stranger to her — to her arms^ as her long-lost 
 father! The strong dying injunction of her 
 whom alone she had known as a mother, acted 
 with the force of a vow on her mind and con- 
 science. Indeed, so linked were Marmaduke 
 PauU and her unseen father together, in her 
 whole life's thinking, that the two images were 
 inseparable — and she embraced him with all 
 the answering innocent fervour of the fondest 
 daughter. 
 
 That in the very hour of her becoming mo- 
 therless, she had found a father, was so like the 
 interposition of heaven, that her solemn enthu- 
 siasm could not bear to part with so sweet an 
 illusion, or confess it was one ; she would fain 
 persuade herself that her foster-mother had
 
 FIRST DAY. 93 
 
 talked deliriously ; the tenderness of her nature 
 concurred with filial respect to so solemn a 
 prayer^ to make her almost set aside the sad 
 idea that neither of those she could so love was 
 her parent; yet^ after indulging this feeling 
 till she laid her head on the shoulder of the 
 deceived man (who^ in his old longing for female 
 offsprings and this its gratification^ seemed com- 
 forted under the melancholy fate of his wife of 
 a few months), in her fatigue or fondness, or 
 both — a painful vague sense of impropriety 
 already sprung up in her delicate mind, and 
 she raised it again. But in the present hurry 
 and confounding of all long preconceived ideas 
 of her parentage, nothing was consistent in her 
 conduct or sentiments. It was a strange, new, 
 hurlyburly of great changes — death, burial, 
 pity, wonder — and till long after the funeral, 
 till after her father (as we shall call him, he 
 being such to her feeling and to his imagina- 
 tion,) had arranged matters to reside with her 
 and an old, woman who had previously tended 
 her few sheep and cows for Alice, Ruth might 
 almost be said to have led a life of suspended 
 animation. All was as a troubled dream, not 
 without some dark overshadowings from the 
 future, of perplexity, confusion, and conflicting 
 feelings to come.
 
 94 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Yes — I am shattered — I have service seen — 
 And service done — I have in troubles been — 
 And the brown buff is o'er my features spread. Crabbe. 
 
 Many and long were the stories that the 
 seafaring man had to tell to Ruth, of his long 
 absence. So great^ on her foster-mother's 
 account, was her interest in his far voyages and 
 perils (mournful as was that interest), that Ruth 
 could listen to nothing else, while leading him 
 to spots where the sun shone warmly, or where 
 some object he might remember, a ruin or a 
 peak, was half visible to his imperfect sight. 
 But when the novelty of such companionship 
 was past — delightful novelty to so long lonely 
 a girl, with so warm and social a nature ! — 
 as such companionship began to increase even 
 a father's fondness toward her, his new found 
 darling, his soft inquiring tender friend, and 
 still more, the watchful guide of his faltering 
 steps ; then it was that the fuU sense of her 
 most strange and embarrassing predicament, 
 rushed on her mind, robbed her of sweet sleep, 
 plunged her in reverie without end, and influenced
 
 FIRST DAY. 95 
 
 her actions toward him. When a sense of deli- 
 cacy^ an artificial, a reasoning delicacy, founded 
 on the dying words of her foster-mother, made 
 her constrained and cold on a sudden, the 
 change was so instantly felt by the solitary 
 man, full of the father, that some explanation 
 was required on the instant, and as none could 
 be given, the pained girl (pained by paining 
 him) could only relieve him by renewing that 
 manner of innocent blandishment which was 
 natural between father and child. Yet she saw 
 that this must have an end. Not that she 
 could not, of her own pure nature, have hap- 
 pily allowed his circling arm, or met his lips in 
 the parting kiss at night, without her modesty* 
 taking the least alarm ; it was but through the 
 conventional strictness of forms, that this rea- 
 soning bashfulness was at all alarmed. She 
 wished she could forget her mother's words ; 
 she wept all night to think he was not her fa- 
 ther ; she thought him (except for weather and 
 a few furrows of thought in the brow) the very 
 being her foster-mother had so often painted, 
 — gentle of eye, pensive, sensible, of noble fore- 
 head and presence, a strong mind and feeling 
 heart. In examining unobserved, as she could 
 do, his features, she would gaze till her own 
 eyes swam in tears at the beauty of his, affected
 
 96 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 with the thought of such eyes having lost the 
 light of heaven. Yet she almost indulged a 
 share of selfish pleasure that this privation 
 would attach him to her by a sort of necessity^ 
 so that she would never be fatherless again. 
 When an idle pang crossed her mind^ in think- 
 ing how poor Alice would almost have been 
 jealous of her office of leading him, were she 
 aHve, she quickly removed it by recalling forci- 
 bly to her mind the fact that she was not the 
 daughter of Alice — the vague repulsive idea of 
 a moment, that of her thus rivalling a mother, 
 though in the most innocent way, was thus 
 overcome, for Alice was to her but a stranger 
 in blood. Both were strangers in blood. Yet 
 Ruth rarely thought of or sighed for her real 
 father unknown. An ideal one had been so 
 long assigned her, that now, while that one was 
 become impersonated before her, there was 
 room in neither her heart nor her mind for 
 another. Yet, while she looked at this object 
 as one come back from the dead, and recalled 
 the long portion of her little life, throughout 
 which he had been to her as some gracious 
 being of some unknown state of existence, to 
 be reverenced and mourned, rather than ex- 
 pected, she felt a confusing contrast between 
 that venerated shadow and the actual person
 
 FIRST DAY. 97 
 
 of a father, — that, spiritualized by distance, 
 and almost certain death ; this, a palpable bless- 
 ing, a smiling, conversing, tender helpmate (for 
 time had familiarized to him the horror of blind- 
 ness, and light was not quite shut out) who 
 made her feel, for the first time, her woman- 
 hood — ^her own capability of pleasing and being 
 pleased — which the dismal taciturnity of love- 
 melancholy in her former ill-fated companion 
 had never elicited. She could not help often 
 wishing that her dream of the parent figure, 
 vague as it was, had been less violently broken 
 — that Marmaduke had been older, even 
 sterner, less inclined to be gentle to her gentle- 
 ness and almost submissive to her childish will. 
 One fact she was surprised and pained to 
 learn, from hints dropped, and general tone of 
 discourse about his wife, that the unhappy 
 woman^s passion had been scarcely returned — 
 that pity and that degree of return which a 
 generous nature cannot refuse to love so un- 
 bounded, devoted as hers., had lulled her into 
 full content ; but that his heart had even been 
 engaged, when his extreme youth, and that 
 generosity of grateful pity, induced him to be- 
 come her husband ; and Ruth would go to 
 bed early, on purpose to think in silence and 
 seclusion on that long misery of her foster- 
 
 VOL. I. F
 
 98 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 mother, whom she never pitied, from her hearths 
 depth, so painfully before. And now that she 
 found what uncertainty hangs over hearts and 
 loves and fates, she found food for new and 
 bitter thoughts, grew melancholy, and wept for 
 more than Alice, in ostensibly weeping for her 
 error and her fate. 
 
 Marmaduke Paull had that indolent sort of 
 temperament which may be often observed in 
 the enthusiastic character, especially in the 
 sphere of the passions. His time on shipboard 
 had not been one of robust labour, but occu- 
 pied in keeping purser's accompts, he being 
 what the rustic folk called a " scholar,'^ and he 
 had indeed made proficiency enough to attain 
 lucrative employment in the Service, before 
 the loss of his sight by lightning. His whole 
 feelings had been early averse from a sea life ; 
 but the influence of an uncle, a lieutenant, hav- 
 ing led him abroad, he became afterwards liable 
 to impressment, as has been said. But not all 
 the years sacrificed to the sea, had estranged 
 his rather melancholic mind from the pensive 
 charms of the land, especially those of his 
 native land, and its delicious landscapes along 
 the banks of the Conwy river, where he was 
 born, between the towns of Conwy and Llan- 
 rwst. The loss of sight could not quite obli-
 
 FIRST DAY. 99 
 
 terate those charms. The lowing of cattle, the 
 brawling of the shallows where he used to fish 
 when a boy, the air scented with the bog- 
 myrtle, the wild thyme, or whatever peculiar 
 vegetable growth distinguished any favourite 
 mountain haunt of his, still remained the same, 
 to whisper (if mournfully, still sweetly) to his 
 imagination, of the thickly greened roof of the 
 cottage, the mounting supper-smoke of the 
 inmates, — the glorified July evening sky, the 
 beautiful west, — the meadows all flowers, — of all 
 that, he, standing in the old spot, could no 
 more see. And thus while the same sweet 
 scents, the same cuckoo, the same smell of 
 greenwood smoke, the same deep calm, and soft 
 singing of birds, addressed his remaining 
 senses — ^in such spots he found regret for the 
 one sense lost, far less bitter than in any other. 
 Hence, having considerable resources, partly 
 from his bachelor uncle, partly from his 
 deceased wife, Marmaduke soon resolved to 
 abandon the melancholy house of the Orme's 
 Head jDromontory, and, having done so, obtain- 
 ed the very farmhouse in which he was born, 
 near the river Conwy, in the most triily pas- 
 toral, rich, and romantic vale of that name. 
 
 And had he abandoned all view of the solace 
 of wedlock, notwithstanding his impassioned 
 F 2
 
 100 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 character? The father had enlisted all the 
 feelings of his nature in its own pure cause* 
 The desire of a daughter had been strong in 
 his heart from the first, in common with most 
 parental hearts, of somewhat feminine biaa 
 towards tenderness and fondness. The help- 
 lessness of the female offspring seems to pr(K 
 mise a sort of perpetual infancy, or rather the 
 dependence of infancy. Marmaduke found this 
 boyish desire now fulfilled. He had a daugh- 
 ter, a sweet and gentle one. We omitted to 
 record the long illness which the bruised and 
 disfigured shipwrecked man suffered; a fever 
 of the nerves increased to a species of dangerous 
 typhus, probably by the shock and melancholy 
 of the death and burial of a wife, whom , if he 
 had not actually loved, he had esteemed and 
 was most grateful to, for the intense love she 
 bore to him, and now pitied to agony. The 
 idea of his having returned just in time to take 
 the dead hand of this dear friend, and yet too 
 late to feel its rapturous pressure, — to see her 
 faded corpse, but not to be ever more seen by 
 the eyes his presence would have delighted, — 
 (blind, battered, and altered even as he was) — 
 almost beyond that of an angel come in all the 
 beauty of heaven, — this idea was an affecting, 
 a tragical one. Friendship wrought in his
 
 FIRST DAY. 101 
 
 heart, with a tragic force equal to that of love. 
 Nothing could have soothed that poignant 
 agony so speedily, but the constant watch 
 and the soft weeping tones and tender touch of 
 the being who stepped in to fill the black void 
 in his affections ; that novelty of sweet rela- 
 tion — daughter — above all the daughter — as 
 he believed — of that lost dear friend, whom he 
 missed with more of a filial than conjugal pain 
 of separation. 
 
 It is not unusually seen, that the indolent 
 temperaments, such as I have assigned to the 
 returned seaman, carry about passions of violent 
 character, — sleeping as it were, awaiting like a 
 mine of gunpowder the accident which is to be 
 as the inflaming spark, — and carry even (often) 
 to the grave, from this accident never occurring, 
 — from this spark never happening to kindle 
 the sullen material of combustion. This 
 indolence now prevailed with Marmaduke 
 PauU ; and induced him to forego, for life, 
 every thought of warmer passions, for the sake 
 of that novel calm delicious one — a father's 
 love. To this, doubtless, the pensive gloom of 
 blindness contributed. His adventures (for 
 he had passed through many), his early mar- 
 riage, — the weariness of nerves much tried, and 
 lastly his loss of sight, — aU these made his life
 
 102 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 seem a long one, already past. He counted by 
 events, rather than years, (his neglected figure 
 even led others, casual observers — to begin to 
 call him the " old blind man,") and thus felt 
 disposed to rest in this placid port of the pas- 
 sions of manhood — the love of his child, — 
 resigning all more tumultuous hopes for its sake. 
 As an ambitious adventurer bound on a voyage 
 of discovery, after suffering many hardships, 
 and almost losing hope of making the land of 
 promise, puts in at some smiling country's bay, 
 and, while anchoring there in a calm, and lulled 
 by the songs, the voices, the quietude, of shep- 
 herd-haunts, peeping embosomed in its hills, 
 the gambols of lambs, and blue and green 
 glimpsing of waters and fields, laughing open 
 to a cloudless sky — almost forgets that he ever 
 panted for any prouder land than that lowly, 
 lovely one ; and seems as happy to set his foot 
 on its soft sod, and gather a simple, sweet 
 flower there, after all the briny barrenness of 
 his sea way, as he could be in planting the 
 standard of his king on the country of his 
 ambitious search, and even culling some pre- 
 cious ore which he might find there. For a 
 time he is as happy. Thus did Marmaduke 
 feel himself ^^ shut up in measureless content," 
 while living with, and living for, his new-found
 
 FIRST DAY. 103 
 
 daughter — thus did he resign, for the pleasure 
 her affection gave him, and the charming cheer- 
 ing innocence of her every endearment, and 
 her ceaseless efforts to amuse him — all higher 
 ambition of the heart. 
 
 Ruth was desired one day to lead him to the 
 town of his earliest knowledge, Conwy, for a 
 *^ raking up'^ as he said of ^^ old friends." 
 
 ^^ How I know the sound of the shiver of 
 that ivy, over my head ! I could almost tell you 
 which of the old towers we're under now," said 
 the father, as they sate on a boat lying keel 
 upward, under the wall of the noble castle 
 every where exhibiting a hanging wood of 
 various coloured ivy. Before them the blue* 
 estuary of the river with its little fishing-boats, 
 lay sunny the great sea on one hand, with all 
 the peaks and headlands of the bay, the 
 narrowing river banks contrasting to that sea's 
 vast, their own rich verdure and cattle, and 
 white farms, in mountain-perspective, on the 
 other. The town's people, and the few 
 sailors from other parts, and children catching 
 crabs at low water, diversified the scene close 
 before them, all looking lively, even to the 
 mournful old themselves, as they leaned on 
 rusty anchors, or sate still on ruinous boats 
 rotting there, in the broad, briUiant, gay
 
 104 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 expanse of sunny sand, sunny blue waters, and 
 sunny golden green grass of the valley, in 
 which, or against which, as a background, all 
 these objects lay basking, or stirred feebly, or 
 busied themselves, or rested statue-like. 
 
 " Now look out an old man, my love, and 
 stop him as he goes by, that I may ask him 
 about old times." 
 
 Ruth stopped several even old men in vain. 
 At last came one who had lived aU his life in 
 Conwy, and they fell into conversation. 
 
 " And what *s become of that good kind fel- 
 low, that got into trouble by resisting the press- 
 gang, when they took me, and poor dear Alice 
 fought two of them, and he took her part ? '' 
 
 " Ned Gwillim, wasn't his name ? I remem- 
 ber him very well. Why, he got drunk that 
 night, and made up his quarrel about you, and 
 enlisted himself in the Marines ; and a sad dog 
 he turned out — ^he was hanged for piracy, they 
 do say. Aye, his taking your part, by getting 
 acquainted with that gang, was the first of his 
 going wrong. I heard his father say (for he and 
 I are kin) — he was one of a press-gang himself 
 after that, and one of the hard-heartedest too.'' 
 
 '^And do you know GrifFy Pugh — poor 
 GrifFy ! He kept a rope walk — he was a good 
 friend to me — I must call on him" —
 
 FIRST DAY. 105 
 
 « Oh, / know GrifFy Pugh, father/' Ruth in- 
 terposed : "he*s just married." 
 
 *^ Married again^ then ? *' 
 
 ^^No." 
 
 *^ Yes ! I mean old Pugh's (the smuggler's) 
 son, and he had a wife and a son, I *m sure, 
 before I was pressed." 
 
 ^^ Oh, but it's that son your daughter means, 
 who is just married ; they call your friend 
 Griffy ^old' Pugh now — the old grandfather's 
 been dead long — ^' 
 
 " What !" said Marmaduke, " that little chap 
 I used to carry on my back, and buy farthing 
 cakes for, married ? Aye, to be sure ! he must 
 be a man by this time ; I 'd forgot the years — ■" 
 
 Many an inquiry of such kind having been 
 met by some chilling reply, relating change, 
 reverse, or death, in his old intimates, Marma- 
 duke said, "Well, my dear, I think there's no- 
 body left in Conwy that it's worth my going 
 into the town to see. Faith ! even lead me, 
 love, to the old tumbled-down tower on the 
 south side of the castle walls. I used to often 
 loiter, and lean on it, as it lies, with the huge 
 hanging ruin of the undermined upper part, 
 above my head — I warrant I shall find that the 
 same, and in the same place. Every body and 
 every thing else seems as changed as I am. I
 
 106 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 heard a man ask just now, ^who is that oM 
 blmd man ? ' and another answered, ' some 
 stranger' — and yet I 'm not forty years old, and 
 I was born not six miles off ! " 
 
 " But you don 't look old," said Ruth, ^^ only 
 very brown and weather-beat — indeed, 1 think 
 you look the handsomer for that ! When I 
 used to dream of your being come back, long 
 ago, I always saw you with white hair, and 
 such a beard ! and dreamt I knelt down, and 
 you blest me with an old shrivelled hand on 
 my head, just like a picture of Moses — and 
 now, when I play with you, and you with me, 
 and I see your fine black hair, and those eyes 
 — it is so funny ! — such a disappointment almost 
 — yet not that neither ! I don^t know hoiv it 
 is ! only I don't seem to \\2i\e found my father 
 when I have found him. Good God ! what am 
 I saying ? ^^ And she gently withdrew herself 
 from his parental fondness of action, he having 
 taken her on his lap, as she talked. 
 
 A young man of modest deportment, in sai- 
 lor's dress, just then caught the sighing girPs eye, 
 who exclaimed, " Fy, Annwyll ! here's cousin 
 William come home, and grown quite into a 
 man ! " This youth, a son of a deceased bro- 
 ther of Marmaduke, was the boy who had for a 
 short time played with Ruth in her infancy,
 
 FIRST DAY. 107 
 
 and now and then been her companion since, 
 in some of her rambles, prior to her protector's 
 death, not without a tender sentiment — hardly 
 divulged, yet not wholly secreted — having 
 sprung between them. A long voyage, and 
 long absence, had at least suspended this inci- 
 pient passion in both, whether or no it had 
 suppressed it remains to be seen. 
 
 '^ Good Lord ! how years fly," said the blind 
 uncle, as he measured with his raised left hand 
 the height of the unseen youth, who cordially 
 held his right; "and is this, can this be ^ the 
 baby ? ' poor brother Hugh's last baby, that was 
 born after he died ? William is his name ? — 
 A fine tall fellow thou art, nephew William ! • 
 I wonder if he 's like brother Hugh. — A good 
 bit of prize money Hugh once had, I know ; 
 did he leave much ? " 
 
 " Yes, uncle ; Pm to have a fortune, they 
 say, when I come to be twenty-three ; but my 
 old guardian won't let me know how much.^^ 
 
 ^' You ^11 come often and see us, won 't you, 
 William ? " said Ruth ; " we live now at Pont 
 Porthlwyd, the old house as ye go to Llanwrst, 
 but we haven^t given up quite the house and 
 farm at Llanduddno.^' 
 
 " Yes, cousin Ruth^ sister and I shall often 
 run over to you from the town. Good bye.^^ 
 F 5
 
 108 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 " A few years older than you, my love, isn^t 
 that lad ?" Marmaduke inquired ; '' but I ask 
 you, when I know better myself; he was a child 
 in arms a year or two before I was pressed — a 
 very nice spoken pleasant youth, indeed ! " 
 And he called him back to second Ruth\s invi- 
 tation to their home, which he promptly ac- 
 cepted, again shaking his new found uncle^s 
 hand. 
 
 " And pray, daddy," (it is thus rustic Welsh 
 maidens of every age address a father,) " pray, 
 daddy, why do you want old friends now you've 
 got meT* Ruth said playfully. 
 
 " To tell 'em I have got you, my saucy sweet 
 one,^^ said he, kissing her ; " I want somebody 
 to show my pretty prize to.'^ 
 
 For some time this aflfectionate girl's heart, 
 in which the love and longing of a daughter 
 towards a visionary father had wrought so long 
 its singular effect, sunk, as it were into an in- 
 toxicated sleep. The power of self-delusion 
 was never more manifested. She indulged a 
 waking dream, strong as reality, that this was 
 her actual father. She hardly indulged one 
 thought towards the unknown real authors of 
 her being, still regarding even her, who dying 
 disclaimed her, as her mother. While this 
 strong fancy remained, the change in herself
 
 FIRST DAY. 109 
 
 was even externally striking. That dreamy^ 
 listless, over-sensitive look and whole manner, 
 which allied the wild-dressed, self-dependent, 
 solitary girl of the Orme's Head downs and 
 rocks to the characters of romance, was now 
 changed into the more natural, if more homely 
 character of a happy, healthy, though delicate 
 farmer's daughter, who, instead of lying on sea 
 weed and rock, rolling those expressive eyes 
 round a dim horizon of hazy sea, in search of a 
 visionary father's sail, now cast them round a 
 gentler home-horizon of sheep walk, to view the 
 flocks whitening there, (the new property of 
 Marmaduke), or seated on her humble milking 
 stool, in some recess of those green meadows 
 on the Conwy's side, where the evening sun's 
 low beams slept sweetly, would milk as many 
 ewes as the stoutest, while the blind man, 
 sitting on some oak root, thickly mossed, or 
 a bank of the rocky brook that came down 
 foaming into the Conwy, would amuse her by 
 relating the modes of farming life, and of dairy 
 keeping in distant lands. 
 
 It was during this strange but happy forget- 
 fulness on her part, that the visits of her 
 handsome cousin William grew frequent, his 
 attentions of a kind not to be misunderstood, 
 the talk of his sister Sophy explicitly tending
 
 110 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 to the view of courtship on his part — and not 
 long after that a sudden and total change came 
 over her thought and feeling on the subject of 
 her strange situation. The necessity of tell- 
 ing the truth to Marmaduke, and the pain of so 
 doing, grew hourly upon her. Her cheek 
 would burn with blushes, not such as she had 
 been used to feel, whenever his parental fond- 
 ness urged him to the pure, fond endearments 
 of a father. Her eyes would shrink down from 
 his sightless ones, and remain fixed on the 
 ground in an innocent shame for the deceit it 
 seemed almost her doom to practise, on one so 
 fond, so helpless, so much needing a daughter, 
 so likely to feel acutely the bitter disappoint- 
 ment of having a darling hope and feeling, for 
 which he had resolved to resign all others, at 
 so early a stage of life, thus harshly and 
 eternally baffled and rooted out of his bosom ! 
 He had said to his own heart " I will live only 
 for this sweet daughter — she shall be to me, 
 friend, helpmate, — wife, mourner — everything ! 
 for her I will live and die a widower ! No 
 hand but Ruth's shall lead me ; no hand but 
 Ruth's be about my death-bed ; or close these 
 eyes, or plant my grave ! " She could ill bear 
 to break this dream by saying '^ you have no 
 dauyhter.^' She began to loathe food, lose
 
 FIRST DAY. 1 1 1 
 
 sleep^ cheerfulness, colour^ under this pressing 
 occasion for divulging a secret that had grown 
 by concealment only more grievous to be 
 divulged. And her temper changed. 
 
 The young woman Sophy was astonished by 
 the tart peremptoriness of her rejection of 
 William's suit, even to the threatening to tell 
 her father, should he persevere in it. This 
 was the more strange, inasmuch as she had 
 certainly formed a girlish early attachment to 
 this youth. Nor did she exhibit the least 
 aversion to him, in any light but that of a 
 lover. Neither did she, perhaps, confess to 
 herself, why she so anxiously secreted from 
 Marmaduke the fact of William's overtures, for 
 the uncle's opinion of him she knew to be 
 favourable; but the feeling that she alone was 
 fully conscious of, was the very natural and 
 innocent one of extreme reluctance to resign, 
 as a wife must do, the tender office of her 
 father's guide.
 
 112 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Come, then, I woo thee, sacred Sleep I 
 Spirits of 111 ! your distance keep — 
 And in your own dominions dwell, 
 Ye, the sad emigrants from hell ! 
 
 Watch, dear seraphic beings round, 
 And these black enemies repel. 
 
 Safe be my soul, my slumber sound ! 
 
 Crabbe — " World of Dreams. ^^ 
 
 Oh ! I have had such a dream ! " " Ruth 
 said one mornings on meeting her fatherly 
 protector, at the farmhouse door, just as the 
 sun was rising, and the soft, dim, blue haze of 
 the parting summer night, was seen curling 
 like a steam, all along the course of the Conwy 
 river, and growing all alight with the horizontal 
 beams from across the grand expanse of 
 sea, and all was still throughout the river-side, 
 dales, copses, and flowery recesses between the 
 whitening rocks. " I saw poor dear Ahce.'^ 
 
 " Your mother ? " he interrupted her. " Aye, 
 my mother — I saw her lying as she lay that 
 dreadful night you came home — (blessed night 
 for that, as it was) — I thought as I stood look- 
 ing at her solemn face, through my tears, and
 
 FIRST DAY. 113 
 
 was stooping to kiss those poor lips, so shock- 
 ingly formal, they came a little apart, and a 
 slow smile seemed coming — but oh, what a 
 smile ! spiteful, scornful, sneering, bitter, — 
 ghastly ! —and her dead eyes half opened to 
 leer at me, and oh, they were crueller than 
 even the smile ! Then a heaving of the shroud 
 over her poor bosom, came on, and then a 
 sound crept hollowly through her cold mouth, 
 that at last made up a word — * Rival ! rival 
 me ! Me?* And as it grew stronger, more 
 words — furious ones came, and her ruffled arm 
 started up — oh, father ! sprung up and tore 
 open her winding sheet at the breast, and I 
 heard ^ what if this breast did not give you 
 suck ? dare you wound this heart within it ? 
 Dare you torture it ? Rival me ? ^ Oh, I can^t 
 tell you how frightful it was to see dead and 
 white lips sneer, and glassy fixed eyes stir 
 again to bitterly curse one with a look ! *' 
 
 ^^ That's a z^i/c^ dream, in truth," Marmaduke 
 replied. ^^ Poor soul! her jealousy hardly 
 would survive death ; and to be jealous of her 
 own child ! — What could put such fancies into 
 such an innocent little brain as my Ruth's, I 
 wonder ! — And did poor Alice not suckle you, 
 my dear?" He missed the deeper meaning 
 of these fancied words. — "And that was'nt all.
 
 114 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 I heard the same roaring as was all night then 
 — ^but — oh, father ! — the wildest winds that 
 bellow among the sea caverns of Llanduddno 
 rocks, that snap the trees rooted in the moun- 
 tain stone off short, and pile the waves up like 
 ruins tumbling about, all along the coast, were 
 never like that in my dream, for that had a 
 frightful human voice! — It was a terrible wind 
 and a voice too, in one, a wild, threatening, 
 furious, mad, maddening voice — for I ran mad 
 to hear it when they told me that was my 
 mother's voice — no — it was the 'Fury of the 
 Great Orme's Head ' — (what is a Fury ? I Ve 
 read of it, but forget — Something like a mad 
 ghost that has a bloody w^hip, is'nt it?) — No 
 matter — well ! this voice of this Fury was my 
 mother's turned into that thing ! and go where 
 I would — it raved behind me — oiF sea and off 
 land, up from earth, and down from the clouds, 
 and raging along the beach, and the mountain's 
 side, everywhere that wind, or that voice of the 
 wind followed me, a pale wretch, sometimes 
 turning to ask mercy, sometimes lying flat on 
 the earth, like as praying for my grave to let 
 me in, from it, and the sound it made was, 
 ' Ruth shall rue ! Ruth shall rue ! Ruth the 
 wretch ! Ruth the wretched ! ^ " 
 
 " It's this melancholy life you lead with me, 
 poor child! that gives you these wild dreams, ^^
 
 FIRST DAY. 115 
 
 Marmaduke said deeply musing. " To lead 
 about a blind useless being from one sunny 
 nook to another, is not a life for a beautiful 
 
 young 
 
 She interrupted him eagerly — " Melancholy ? 
 — I should go melancholy mad, if any body 
 but I led you so ! And oh ! do you think 
 it possible that the dead — that Alice — my 
 mother^ I mean — can look down jealously 
 on your being led by me, I mean by any body 
 but her ? I would be sore sorry to pain her 
 poor ghost, if I knew it, and indeed I do fancy 
 that if / were dying, I should cry bitterly when 
 I was shewn the new girl, or the woman, or 
 wife, — whatever it might be, who must take 
 your RutVs office — your forgotten Ruth^s ! 
 So I can feel for her,'' — 
 
 " But you must marry, sweet — will your hus- 
 band leave you to me, think you? " said he 
 laughing. 
 
 '^ Never ! — Husband ? — I never will give one 
 the power to part us ! never while I live ! Yet 
 what do I talk ? '' And she sighed with almost 
 the deep hollowness of groaning. 
 
 ^' And what was that deep sigh for ? ^' he in- 
 quired. " I^ve remarked your tones of voice 
 altered of late ; how low they are, yet how 
 softly sweet, and how mournful ! What is 
 the matter, my own ? — Gone ! ^'
 
 116 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 Ruth had vanished at the moment of his 
 putting this question. 
 
 The growing melancholy of Ruth attracted 
 the sympathy of her friend cousin Sophy, who 
 with William now resided across the river. The 
 former attributed it to love — and hoped to see 
 her brother soon made happy by a confession, 
 which she, whom Ruth had for a time entirely 
 loved and confided in, was a likelier party to 
 ehcit from so shy a girl, than the lover himself. 
 But when she urged her to a disclosure of the 
 cause of this change, — of her swimming eyes 
 fixed on vacancy, her blushes kindling up 
 without outward cause, — of her constrained 
 manner to every one, including Marmaduke 
 himself, Ruth grew as angry as if some crime 
 had been imputed, utterly denied her being 
 unhappy, and occasionally would laugh it off, 
 giving some encouragement to the fond sister, 
 to believe that her brother, who was really in 
 love, had no cause to despond. Still she 
 shunned the young man in all her haunts, 
 anxiously kept herself at a distance from the 
 blind man, whenever she could not help falling 
 into company with the youth, so as never to 
 be the object of his attentions in the father's 
 presence. 
 
 At last Sophy entered in earnest on her
 
 FIRST DAY. 1 1 7 
 
 sisterly task of making an offer for the young 
 man, whose very first steps towards it had 
 been so often checked by the wayward girl, 
 (though her deep blush^ or sudden paleness, 
 would have encouraged a bolder suitor,) that he 
 entreated such singular aid, and thus courted 
 by proxy. 
 
 '^Youknow^ Ruth,^' she remonstrated, "that 
 your father himself would not object to William 
 — ^he always has shown him kindness, and I'd 
 lay my life upon't would be glad to see you 
 his wife — '* 
 
 '^ That's false! Nay, I'm only joking — ^but 
 you'd lose your life then! Don't / know 
 Marmaduke? He wish me WiUiam's wife or- 
 any body's wife ? It's false ! Who's to lead 
 him about ? You, perhaps ? " Ruth astonished 
 her friend by this new outbreak of a spirit 
 irascible and rash, which none had ever beheved 
 to inhabit so gentle a bosom. 
 
 " And why do you call a father ' Marma- 
 duke ' ? said her friend ? " 
 
 Ever after the relation of Ruth's wild 
 and dark dream, Marmaduke grew, daily, a 
 more and more altered man. The languid 
 pause of all passions, the equable course of a 
 pastoral sort of existence, even the real happi- 
 ness incident to a rural competence in his
 
 118 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 little dairy farm, stilly conducted with very few 
 helpers — all these were unable to avert that 
 ' sickness of the heart ' to which enthusiastic 
 natures are liable^ when wanting the rousing 
 influence of adventure^ hope^ fear, vicissitude. 
 But what stung the devoted girl to the 
 heart's quick^ though she never told it^ was a 
 certain coldness in his manner^ some changes 
 in his modes of endearment^ (but this seemed 
 from the absent indifference of the mind much 
 engrossed by some inward topic of thought^ 
 and an alteration in his famihar terms of ad- 
 dressing her. Not that his vigilant watch over 
 her welfare^ or slightest sources of pleasure, 
 was relaxed a moment. He grew, on the con- 
 trary, almost ludicrously anxious about the 
 merest trifles regarding her amusements or 
 taste, would send ofl" man and horse to the 
 town, if she but chanced to say, " How I wish 
 I had such a fish," or "if I were at Conwy, I 
 would buy one of those fine shells they sell 
 there." The want of a many-coloured future, 
 — the having nothing to hope — might account 
 for the father's deep despondent gloom that 
 seemed settling over all his mind, like a night- 
 fall ominous of thunder. But what explained 
 her despondence? Love — even love-melan- 
 choly has ever its little, secret, sacred fire of
 
 FIRST DAY. 119 
 
 hope within its deepest gloom^ and its undefin- 
 able dehght even in the fiercest agony. What 
 could be the feehng^ that in one so young, so 
 remote from the worldly causes that blast the 
 very bud of hope, could shed over her whole 
 deportment, something so like ^^comfortless 
 despair ? " ^' And so I must never, never see 
 my dear daughter, now Providence has blessed 
 me with one ! " Marmaduke said to himself, 
 ripening, one day. '' Could I but once — for 
 one hour see that forehead that^s so smooth, 
 see the arm that comes round my neck, when 
 I'm not well or low-spirited; if I could but 
 for once see this gentle and fair being that is 
 become so necessary to my being, I think I 
 could shut my eyes, after, for ever^ and be 
 content. Yet I should see her for ever after ! 
 Never again could those features be out of my 
 eyes, day or night — once seen, always seen ! — 
 I should never more be blind — What did I rave 
 of — ^ night ? ' Nay, Heaven's providence would 
 spare me their dazzle and their glory o' nights, 
 for indeed I can fancy nothing less than a glory 
 to shine round a face, having such power even 
 unseen as her's has, to make a new world round 
 me, one of joy or miserable gloom, just as her 
 pretty-sounding step coines growing on my
 
 120 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 ear like some fine music, or dies away as it 
 goes, like some passing bell ! What would her 
 going /or ever be like ? Like a death-beU that 
 told me every human heart but my own stood 
 still ! Yet she must go ! Yes — she must marry ; 
 but that ^s a distant thing." 
 
 In this soliloquy Ruth happened to approach, 
 and he pursued aloud his reflections : — "And 
 they will have it you are much like me, Ruth 
 — ^yet you're fair they say, but dark-eyed — and 
 / am all dark. Do you think you 're like me, 
 child?" 
 
 Ruth was dumb — confused — statue-like a 
 moment — then sprung away from sitting by 
 him — " That can never be ! — oh, no ! Wel-a- 
 day, how should that be ? But our old folk 
 talk silly about those things." 
 
 Marmaduke was so engrossed in thought 
 that he heard her imperfectly, and soliloquised 
 aloud and unconsciously on a fresh topic. — 
 "I wish we were again at the Orme's Head 
 now ! I was happier in the eternal melancholy 
 music of that sea, the whistling of that gorse 
 on the bleak sea-side down, when Ruth and I 
 first walked together, than I have been here, 
 in the midst of sweet meadows and singing 
 birds, and Conwy plashing peacefully against 
 its sod banks."
 
 FIRST DAY. 121 
 
 " And so do I ! " Ruth exclaimed eagerly, 
 catching at his soliloquising words^ " Let us go 
 back there ! let us make a change ! I do so 
 love the wildness of every thing there — the fierce 
 screaming sea-birds^ the hollow bellowing of 
 our mountain, the storms and the waves ! " 
 
 ^^ Ha ! I was'nt speaking to you — oh no ! 
 that 's a fit place for me ; this fitter for you^ poor 
 girl! Oh, it's wrong, very wrong, that I let you 
 waste your life thus, here, following a blind 
 man that's a stranger to you, that never had 
 you on his knee, a baby — has no recollection 
 of your voice — your person — but as a ravishing 
 music! but as beautiful! beautiful! D'ye 
 think there 's no beauty in my mind's eye,' 
 because my bodily eye's well nigh shut against 
 you, girl ? Aye, in my very eye of soul ! — Yes, 
 my dear, dear daughter ! I shall not be so sel- 
 fish to deprive some good man of the blessing 
 of such a wife ! But now, let's leave all that 
 to the future, and enjoy this sweet air of a fine 
 evening, and the coolness that this tumbling 
 water from the great waterfall in the wood 
 overhead throws round us, as it scatters a little 
 shower (I can feel its sprinkle here) over these 
 harebells, and the honeysuckles that I smell 
 from somewhere, so strong and so delicious ! 
 Yet I'd rather Llanduddno rocks after all, that's 
 
 VOL. I. G
 
 122 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 • 
 
 true ! Didst ever have a sweetheart, my 
 wench ? Come tell me, my Ruth ! " 
 
 Taken by surprise, she at first laughed, but 
 being prest further, after hesitating confusion, 
 avowed in the innocent frankness of her nature, 
 the secret of her early childish attachment and 
 later intimacy with WilUam. She hardly knew, 
 as has been stated, why she kept it one ; yet 
 such had been her anxiety to make it a pro- 
 found one, that she even imposed secresy on 
 the youth's sister, as a condition of her even 
 speaking to him. Nothing had been so irksome 
 to her as the idea of divulging to her father (as 
 we shall continue to call him) the fact that even 
 an overture of love had been made to her ; but 
 that of leaving him to believe that she had been 
 favourable to it was intolerable. Yet she knew 
 not why she felt so ; and now that this so hated 
 disclosure had been drawn from her, she felt 
 as if she stood before him an offender — ^ready 
 to be discarded for ever. Yet she knew that 
 hitherto he had been so partial to his nephew, 
 that she, notwithstanding, expected nothing 
 but approval from his lips. It was a desolate 
 feeling, and self-reproachful one within, which 
 alone made her stand thus culprit-like. 
 
 Marmaduke leaped to his feet, like one 
 wounded in the dark, or stung mortally while
 
 FIRST DAY. 123 
 
 sleeping in deep and flowery grass, and a mor- 
 tal melancholy was painted on his speaking 
 countenance, with the suddenness of the shadow 
 of a solitary sweeping thunder-cloud, come all 
 at once over an autumn landscape. His words 
 were wild — ^^ And you never told me ! me, your 
 only companion — only friend — protector — fa- 
 ther ! Is this to be a father ? My nephew ! 
 your own uncle's own son ! fye, fye ! I care 
 not about tables of kindred, I swear it's fulsome 
 to think of such a nearness in blood between 
 lovers ! You to be a lover too — a baby ? 
 ^Played together when children ?\ Besides, 
 he 's of a bad family." 
 
 ^' Tour's a bad family ! you bad ? Dear 
 fath— ^' 
 
 ^^ Dear me no dears ! Aye, fool ! I am of a 
 bad family ! How do you know how bad I 
 myself am ? how bad, and worse, and worst of 
 men I may yet be ? Am I dead yet ? Is my 
 account closed with my God and the judgment 
 yet ? How do you pretend to know me for a 
 good man, much more my family, till you see 
 me coffined — know all IVe done — may yet do 
 — all they have ever done ? Yes ! his father — 
 my brother Hugh — once was with smugglers, 
 and run more than one cargo under the Orme's 
 Head!" 
 
 g2
 
 124 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 ^' Dear, dear father ! " Ruth was beginning 
 to say passionately, her eyes hghted up with 
 joy of this unlooked-for disapproval, and seized 
 his hand. He, mistaking the action for one of 
 urgent entreaty for his favour towards a lover, 
 threw hers from him with a mad ferocity, the 
 action, and the flash, and the working of his 
 fiery yet gloomy eyes, ahke new and terrible 
 to her. 
 
 '^ Entreat me no more, I say ! Take your own 
 wanton way and will ! marry who you will, when 
 you will — I^m but a blind fool, that here disclaim 
 all right in your hand — this 1 where, where is 
 it ? this beautiful blessing, that I as clearly see, 
 spite of my curse of blindness, white as milk, 
 as I do surely feel it soft as the down of the 
 swan's breast — I disclaim all right to the dis- 
 posal of it, all hope of its being to me what it 
 has been ! There are hands enough in the 
 world to lead me, groping, to some black haunt 
 of hideous unspeakable sin, or throw me, dead, 
 mto a grave of the cross way 1 Go, go, go — 
 why d'ye hang upon me ? why fear a wretch 
 so helpless as me ? You may court and coo 
 within a yard of me, and I be all ignorance of 
 your doings, God help me, and take me ! " 
 
 The astonished foster-daughter was so over- 
 powered by this outbreak of passion, which
 
 FIRST DAY. 125 
 
 seemed to her a paroxysm of madness^ that 
 she fainted away. Marmaduke shrieked his 
 terror when he felt her weight on his arm^ met 
 no answer to his wild question, "Was she ill?" 
 cursed himself, laid her down to bring water 
 from the cataract side : yet when her eyes re- 
 opened, their first expression was — pleasure ! 
 
 From that hour, the former delightful inter- 
 course between the blind and his constant 
 guide, was turned to one of strange bitterness ; 
 the affection the same, the mutual dependence 
 the same, yet the whole sweetness and comfort 
 it diffused over either spirit utterly gone. 
 
 The impatience of Ruth under the secret she 
 so longed to break, and thus undeceive Mar- 
 maduke, grew daily greater, — ^her feeling of 
 something like guilt, in thus counterfeiting the 
 part of a daughter, daily more painful. One 
 part of her trials in this imposed innocent im- 
 posture she was now however spared, from the 
 altered habits of her companion ; for, with an 
 evident almost agonising effort, he forbore all 
 those endearments, so frequent once, so natu- 
 ral toward an innocent and childlike daughter. 
 But if her delicacy, increasing with her con- 
 firmed womanhood, escaped that species of 
 pain, the receiving paternal embraces from a 
 man nowise related to her — the feminine lov-
 
 126 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 inyness of her nature sustained a shocks a cold 
 and mortifying pang, more keen than such 
 wounded delicacy could have inflicted, from 
 this inexplicable self-restraint, this mask of 
 dislike and indifference in a friend so newly 
 found, so rapturously received by her young 
 heart, in the moment of its utmost want of 
 such friendship, — that of her being left lonely, 
 a helpless child in an unknown world.
 
 FIRST DAY. 127 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 *' To lose this treasure, which of old 
 Was all my glory, all my pride I 
 May not these arms that form enfold ? 
 
 Is all affection asks denied ? " Crabbe. 
 
 Ruth had been too terrified by the paroxysm 
 of some fierce feeling she could not understand, 
 to venture a renewal of it, by even mentioning 
 to Marmaduke the name of her cousin. But' 
 it was not long ere Paull himself, as if struck 
 with a sense of his own injustice, sent for the 
 young man, in a friendly manner. He sate 
 on a mossy shelf of the natural stone of the 
 soil, which extended across the cottage front, 
 and afforded the convenience of either a bench 
 to sit on, or a shelf on which the utensils of 
 the dairy might be placed to dry, after their 
 being washed in the rude sort of cistern, also 
 formed, with little effort of art, out of the slabs 
 of mountain-stone, into a receptacle for the 
 ceaseless overflow of the lofty-issuing, narrow 
 waterfall, that came down from the romantic
 
 12S THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 heights^ babbling and flashing silvery through 
 the oaks^ ashes, and other trees, growing, 
 horizontally almost, out of the clefts and ledges 
 of that cool, grand, and shady height. Under 
 this the pretty little farm-house lurked, in 
 its old greenish grey of walls rough-stoned. 
 Though the huge stones forming the wall were 
 of irregular shape, the effect of art in adapting 
 their uncouth outlines, is so visible as to im- 
 part a sort of rude grace to the antique Welsh 
 farmhouses, in picturesque contrast to the for- 
 mality of brick and mortar conjunctions in 
 prouder English ones. The green stains of 
 moisture which had run down the house front, 
 from the thatch and its vegetation deep and 
 flowering, were not ugly to the eye of homely 
 taste. The large stack of peat adjoining the 
 house, the curling of the blue smoke from the 
 straw-wisped chimney, the precipitous barrier 
 of the mighty bank, towering like a verdant 
 wall directly behind, conspicuous in its illumi- 
 nated darkness of forest shade (now richly 
 gilded by gleams of a setting sun, that shot up 
 the vale of Conwy, and glistened between the 
 tree heads and the rocks they grew from, bring- 
 ing out to the eye all the trunks of pine and 
 beech) — all these combined to throw a charm 
 of homely quiet and even beauty round the
 
 FIRST DAY. 129 
 
 lonely nook of the residence of this sea-wan- 
 derer^ thus domiciled in his native valley. 
 
 A small mountain pool (Llyn Eigian) sup- 
 plies a stream that^ after forming a cataract 
 high up, called Rhaiader Mawr (or great cata- 
 ract) passes under a romantic bridge Pont 
 Porthlwyd — to lose itself in the main river and 
 charm of the vale — the Conwy. The variously 
 disposed fronts of the wild shelves of rock that 
 formed the channel of this cataract, threw the 
 broken body of waters it conveyed into a mul- 
 titude of forms, scattering foam or flashing 
 prismatic with every fresh direction thus given, 
 while the circumfluous eddying of the torrent 
 round every single mass, covered with shrubs 
 and wild blooms, converted the single fall into 
 numbers, those again uniting in fury of dash 
 and recoil, and deepened noise of fall. Various 
 lodgments for fern, golden and purple flowers, 
 and dwarf trees, in the very face of precipices, 
 catching the sun's long flash, stood out glis- 
 tening from the midst of leafy darkness, taking 
 a splendour not their own from the contrasted 
 glooms around, as well as the dark hue of the 
 slaty crags that tower and topple there, or 
 conceal the depth of the fall, by terrible chasms 
 and clefts of untraceable extent. 
 
 But close to the house, at the base of this 
 G 5
 
 130 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 grotesque landscape hanging on the mountain 
 side, — all was homely, all was stiU. A few 
 grass fields yellowing in the last beams, en- 
 joyed a deeper verdure from their proximity to 
 the well-watered vale, and contact with their 
 own humbler valley (or mountain chasm 
 rather), down which this stream came, almost 
 washing the house threshold. The cuckooes 
 voice was not overpowered by the lowered 
 sounds of the many little streams, all mur- 
 muring round, but found in the single solemn 
 melody of their united falls a sort of gentle 
 symphony sweetly in unison with itself, lulling 
 and full of philosophic melancholy. 
 
 The hfe of the dairy farmer, distinguished 
 from that of the agricultural farmer, presents 
 few features of disgusting nature. Butter, 
 wool, and lambs are the staple resources for 
 the few expenses of this mode of life, such as 
 rent, purchase of cattle, &c. Sheep-shearing, 
 churning, the task of tending sheep to the 
 most verdant patches among the rocks, milking 
 ewes and goats (at least formerly) and cows, and 
 the spinning-wheel, form the chief of both 
 male and female occupations. Hence the 
 quietude of such a life as that led by Marma- 
 duke found no great disturbance from the 
 doings of less helpless inmates of his house ;
 
 FIRST DAY. 131 
 
 hence the melancholy addition to the homely 
 scene, of a blind and useless man seated on the 
 craggy shelf outside, whose fine manly figure, 
 and power of personal activity, made his in- 
 active state more striking, was yet in unison 
 with that scene, — a solitude and a wild cata- 
 ract-chasm, woods tinged as if by autumn, by 
 the last of a golden day, and the sun going 
 down. 
 
 The figure of a neat rustic female, with 
 basket on her arm, which came slowly gliding 
 between the long leafy roof of a wild avenue of 
 trees overhead, and the gilded green sward 
 beneath, as the little path wound there to- 
 wards the house, gave the charm of more active 
 moving life to that placid picture. 
 
 Who, merely looking on, could have con- 
 ectured the inward storm of passions which 
 was brewing in that general peace of earth and 
 sky, — in that commonplace, however pleasing 
 prospect of rustic people and their haunts? — yet 
 in that quiet sightless man, and in that lowly 
 country maiden, were the elements of passion 
 thus stirring, and perhaps preparing tragedies 
 of actual life. 
 
 It was with a heart as heavy as her step that 
 Ruth, coming from the market, loitered under 
 those trees, checked by espying the young
 
 132 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 man, William, in earnest talk with Marma- 
 duke, whose extraordinary gestures rivetted 
 her to the spot, so violent were they, as well 
 as his rapid changes of countenance. Stand- 
 ing behind a tree, further curtained by dwarf 
 oak and hazel bushes, she watched both in their 
 imperfectly heard dialogue. 
 
 The weight on her heart had been but of a 
 few hours' continuance. Sophy, on their way 
 to the town, had told her, in confidence, that 
 her father had not only resolved to marry, but 
 that his future wife was to be no other than a 
 woman of doubtful character, whom he had 
 been attached to in his younger time, and 
 about whom he had been (unknown to Ruth) 
 making anxious inquiries in the neighbourho'od 
 where she formerly lived. 
 
 For since the day of that terrible emotion 
 he betrayed, on Ruth^s mention of her cousin's 
 love, his restlessness had been great, and he 
 made several journeys she knew not whither, 
 under the paid guidance of strangers. Ruth 
 had learned, by hints, the fact that there did 
 exist somewhere an object of his former affec- 
 tion, but little thought of that person ever 
 becoming his wife after so long an interval ; 
 yet he had not wholly hidden from her his 
 half-formed design. But when his resolve was
 
 FIRST DAY. 133 
 
 thus communicated to her, it seemed that she 
 had never heard of such design before (indeed 
 it had never been beheved), and her secret 
 pain was extreme. And now she stood, palUd 
 and weary, expecting some further trouble from 
 this interview between the uncle and the 
 nephew. 
 
 She saw a pale of unusual lividness steal 
 over the features of the former, even to the 
 lips that quivered, and the lofty forehead, while 
 his hand was clenched, and a degree of tremb- 
 ling, visible even where she lurked, shook his 
 frame till his knees almost struck each other. 
 She remarked that while he extended his hand 
 to the youth, his face was almost averted, 
 and that when the latter seated himself by his 
 side, Marmaduke shifted his seat further from 
 him ; then there was strange writhing of the 
 features, as if of one under agony, and grim 
 laughing, that even her simple ignorance could 
 not hear without bursting into tears, so evident, 
 conjoined with his aspect altogether, was the 
 hollowness, the bitterness, the anguish of that 
 laughter. 
 
 More than once he started up, and paced the 
 turf with rapid and fearless step, notwithstand- 
 ing the ruggedness of the denuded rock en- 
 dangering his reckless tread. On one of these
 
 134 THE MOUNTAIN- DECAMERON. 
 
 occasions William, whose face was beaming all 
 joy and surprise, in contrast to the turbulent 
 dejected despair of the other, ran after him, 
 and caught his hand in precaution, but the 
 blind man, though in evident friendship with 
 him, snatched it away as from the fang of some 
 loathed animal, and turned on him a counte- 
 nance stern almost to fury for that kind oiFer, 
 as if that help, or that hand, was more unAvel- 
 come than the worst fall he might suffer from 
 the want of it. At last William took leave 
 with a face all thankful and lighted up, and 
 Marmaduke remained sitting alone ; his two 
 hands were clenched, his look more composed, 
 but a blacker melancholy sate on its ghastly 
 fixedness of muscles, nothing stirring but his 
 under-lip, that slightly quivered, and his eye- 
 lids, that winked more rapidly, while the sight- 
 less, though still clear, orbs were for a long 
 space upturned to heaven, shewing the whites 
 extensively. 
 
 Ruth learned too soon the nature of that 
 conference. Marmaduke, secreting his own 
 view to marriage, urged the suit of his nephew 
 with a zeal she was long unable to believe 
 sincere or designed, but as a trial of her real 
 inclination. He had formally promised to the 
 lover, at that interview, all his influence as a
 
 FIRST DAY. - 135 
 
 father over Ruth, and kept his promise. He 
 himself, meanwhile, prepared to remove back 
 to the wilder home of the promontory, leaving 
 Sophy and Ruth in his pleasanter farm of the 
 valley. Ruth, however thunderstricken by 
 this change, resigned herself to this new will 
 of Marmaduke with an alacrity that might have 
 seemed astonishing, had not his belief been 
 that her previous reiterated avowal of dislike 
 to the youth, was untrue, or merely a tender 
 reluctance to quit him, and yield her office of 
 leading him to another. 
 
 Thus, in a short time, was to be seen the 
 father led by no one, not even a dog, trusting 
 to a stick alone, wandering the wild and lonely' 
 sea-side down between the two Orme's Heads, 
 or sitting melancholy in the sun at the door of 
 the cottage where Alice Woolstoncraft * had 
 languished out her life for him, and Ruth, not 
 less plunged in a profound melancholy, though 
 receiving the honest and warm addresses of 
 her rustic lover, haunting the spots where ever 
 she had led her blind companion, with a fond- 
 ness of recollection such as no lover could have 
 felt more constantly, more torturingly. 
 
 * It was the custom in Wales, down to within a century 
 even, for the wife to retain her maiden name after marriage.
 
 136 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 Sophy, the attached sister of a brother but 
 recently restored from a long absence at sea, 
 watched the actions of her future sister-in-law 
 with perplexed wonder. To her watch the 
 drooping girl betrayed aU the symptoms of a 
 violent first love : — ^her consent to an early 
 marriage was not only full, but now was fol- 
 lowed by some degree of eagerness for its 
 solemnization, — yet was it evident to all but 
 the hope-flattered lover, that he was not the 
 object of that love, though that of her consent. 
 
 "Ruth! Ruth!" said the impatient sister 
 one day, " you that used to tell me all your little 
 secrets tell me none, and are keeping some 
 great one from me — and from poor William, 
 I 'm afraid you 're in love I " 
 
 '^ And, pray, would you have me not in love,'' 
 she answered, laughing, ^^ if you wish me to be 
 your brother's " 
 
 " Wife, you would say? Yes, — with him; — 
 but I 've watched your ways with him, and it's 
 not William you like, I'm certain it's not! 
 Now^ you laugh, yet you're as white as that rock, 
 and just now you was red as those mountain- ash 
 berries waving over it, and you look so conscious 
 always, and many a time I Ve caught you sob- 
 bing by yourself, ready to break your heart; yet 
 thinking I had n't heard, you ^ve come laughing
 
 FIRST DAY. 
 
 137 
 
 to me; — your eyes always shrink down as if 
 you was ashamed when I talk of love; yet 
 when you meet William^ instead of all these 
 looks and ways being most then, there's no 
 such thing ! — and you make up your face_, and 
 if you smile at him^ Lord ! how ugly your 
 smile isj because it's so sly and so forced ! I 
 can spy a sad frown within your eyes when 
 you try to look soft at his ! I do wonder the 
 poor fellow does not see it too. How different 
 you used to look, when you had been away but 
 an hour, in your father's face when he wanted 
 your hand, and his very eyes laughed, blind as 
 he was, as they rolled to where he heard your 
 steps, and said, — ' Here she comes ! ' And* 
 what sets you crying now ? " 
 
 Ruth grew daily more irascible. Her con- 
 strained gaiety now again changed to anger; 
 — she " would not be catechised, — she had 
 no secret; even if she were already her 
 sister-in-law she would not put up with her 
 charging naughty secrets upon her," — with 
 much more. 
 
 She "^ would charge Sophy, in her turn, with 
 keeping a cruel secret, — the secret of her fa- 
 ther's meaning to marry ; — ^he never would 
 have thought on 't but for them two (her and 
 William), far less insisted, as he did, on her 
 (Ruth's) marrying. However, far as she'd
 
 138 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 gone, she would never go to church till her fa- 
 ther had been, and then she didn't care how soon 
 — nor with whom, hardly," she added faintly, 
 overheard by Sophy, who threatened to tell 
 her brother, and the quarrel ran high. Ruth, 
 however, lost her spirit totally with that single 
 burst, and feU to crying humbly and bitterly, 
 and very meekly entreated the girl not to tell 
 him; "for that," said she, "will anger my 
 father, and make him hate me worse than 
 ever/^ 
 
 " Why do you think he hates you ? " 
 " Why?'' she retorted, — "why am I living 
 here? Why is somebody else leading him 
 now ? Why am I left alone here ?'* 
 
 ^^ And so you are all alone, with William 
 living so near, and me along with you ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes, yes! — alone! alone! alone V the 
 unguarded impassioned girl broke forth, clasp- 
 ing her two hands together, and raising them 
 as to attest Heaven to her lonely brokenheart- 
 edness ; then dropping both arms by her side, 
 and bowing her head, stood drooping, fixing 
 her eyes on the ground she trod on, — as if 
 nothing remained to her, young as she was, of 
 some blighted hope, or powerful desire, but 
 those sad and solemn ones, of man in his ut- 
 most decay — the hope of mercy above — the 
 desire of a grave below.
 
 FIRST DAY. 139 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Cold nervous tremblings shook his sturdy frame, 
 And strange disease — he could not say the name ; 
 Wild were his dreams Crabbe. 
 
 Meanwhile nothing could be more dismal 
 than the life led by Marmaduke Paull. He 
 spent most of his time in a sort of cave hol- 
 lowed out in the base of the Llanduddno rock, 
 by the waves, not without danger of his being 
 surprised by the returning tide : and he would" 
 climb the Orme's Head, and be seen conspi- 
 cuous at a height where few would have be- 
 lieved it possible for a blind man to clamber 
 alone. His native strong sense, and intuitive 
 knowledge of human nature, told him how 
 short-lived must be his hold on the heart of 
 that young woman; how slight the claim to 
 tenderness of a sightless declining father, when 
 opposed to that (which must soon arise to de- 
 feat it) of a pretty tottering first-born, to be 
 taught its first steps — the daughter*s duty 
 against the mother's doating ! " Yet," said he
 
 140 THE MOUNT AIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 to himself^ '^ God help me ! what is a being like 
 me, whose steps must be led for ever, while 
 the child's are upheld but for a little while, 
 what am I, who have been led by her, but a 
 child in some sort, dependent as a child — pa- 
 rent and child in one, almost ! But if I do 
 want her as an infant might, would I even wish 
 to deprive her of that sweeter joy, and all those 
 domestic joys that belong to the mother's and 
 wife's state ? " 
 
 Thus brooded Paull, and tried to reconcile 
 himself to his prospective state of desertion, 
 and when he was next in Ruth's society (who 
 frequently still came for a day or two to her old 
 domicile, where the same aged domestic looked 
 after the very small farm,) after one of these re- 
 veries, his talk was all of her union with Wil- 
 liam. Yet, in spite of his fully designing to 
 sanction it, the very idea of her being on terms 
 only of any thing like courtship with any one, 
 would be eternally rushing back, like a perfect 
 surprise on this deeply solitary, though highly 
 social man's mind. His mind could'nt make ac- 
 quaintance with that idea ! It was strange, it 
 seemed like a madness to himself, yet so it 
 was. After weeks, months of what he thought 
 a settling of the question in his own breast, 
 the fatal ''they," the startling plural of ''Wil-
 
 FIRST DAY. 141 
 
 liam and Ruth" — Ruth the new-found^ his own 
 dear guide) — ^^Ruth and William" that new 
 conjunction, for ever on his muttering tongue, 
 was unbearable ! It was irreconcileable to his 
 soul^ not to his sensual nature, he confessed not 
 one pang of that species of jealousy to himself 
 in his sternest self-scrutiny ; no^ it was such a 
 jealousy as a child can feel towards a more be- 
 loved child, a sister toward a more favoured 
 sister, where the prize is no less innocent a one 
 than maternal love ! Helpless as he was, it 
 was indeed a trial, to consign to another, and 
 for ever, his own helpmate, and so sweet an 
 one ! What wonder that when over night he 
 had forced on his mind a sort of familiarity 
 with, and endurance of this self-violence, be- 
 fore he had slept an hour, it came back, waking 
 him in dead of night, — that hateful horror 
 " WiUiam and Ruth :" '' Ruth and her hus- 
 band ! " came back, as new as if a Doomsday 
 were announced, and all graves burst open with 
 their secrets ; that it thundered to his thought 
 after that brief sleep's respite, like the very 
 trump of doom ; — that his heart was set palpi- 
 tating fearfully, that cold drops stood on his 
 brow, that he sprung upright, almost as might 
 one of those dead that died in some hideous 
 sin, against God or Nature, start upright in
 
 142 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 one of those yawning graves, chattering skull- 
 teeth, and scowling madness in all their fester- 
 ing mortal ruin, with the ruins of their grave 
 around ? that he sate there shaking, while his 
 flesh seemed to crawl, and the dark of night's 
 dead, that was round him, which he could not 
 break like another man, seemed to have fallen 
 eternally on the whole world, where, he alone, 
 was left to gnash his teeth, and die — die alone, 
 alone P for nothing less than such obliteration 
 of life, such a true world-at-an-end feeling as 
 that, did at such times come crushing the soul 
 of that sightless man, with the recurring thun- 
 der-peal of thought—" Ruth and William ! " — 
 « T/ieyl" 
 
 Why do we, mankind, talk of each other 
 as creatures of one mould, one nature ? — The 
 hyena knows less of the inner nature of the 
 most sweet of feminine bosoms — that sweet 
 woman-bosom knows less of the awful divine 
 pity in the heart of the Lamb of God when 
 come in the flesh to " take away the sins of the 
 world " (if it be lawful to so speak reverently) — 
 than knows this man, of man ; than understands 
 human mind of human mind ; and as little as 
 feels that bloody hyena's heart for that heart of 
 our incarnate (however frail, alas !) angel of the 
 world — as little, less if possible, feels the ge-
 
 FIRST DAY. 143 
 
 neral Heart of a proud pretending high-civilized 
 Community for any particular heart that ever 
 bled or broke^ is bleeding or is breaking ! 
 
 ^^ A good-for-nothing old fellow that must 
 be, to be so shilly-shally about the young 
 couplers coming together !" said many a harm- 
 less gossip, knitting on a green bank or earthy 
 threshold, in the pleasant valley. Could she 
 or such have entered that blind hermit man^s 
 bosom, and caught but a faint conception of its 
 pains, of that desolateness, which would have 
 owned as a sort of remedy any other pain even 
 to rousing agony — any but this, which itself was 
 instrumental to that desolation ; — could she 
 have conceived what it is to feel with the en- 
 thusiasm of some higher nature, and to want 
 the poorest object on which to vent that feeling 
 of more than man, to keep it all for that noi- 
 some hole, a grave — to die the death of the self- 
 bloated toad or poisoned reptile, that crawls out 
 of man's sight to die — the death of any thing 
 less even than man — could this cool re viler, I 
 say, have understood the being she reviled, 
 would she not have pitied, and for shame, if not 
 for pity, have exclaimed, ^' God help him ! '* ? 
 
 At least, let us not rashly assign to evil pas- 
 sions the fact that after such dead-night parox- 
 ysms as these, Paull wavered in his resolve —
 
 144 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 bade Ruth defer, at leasts her talked of nup- 
 tials ; neither to her, innocent as she was, 
 attach blame that such delay came almost to 
 her filial heart with all the becalming luxury 
 of a respite to the death-doomed. 
 
 After a time, Ruth resolved to divulge to 
 him her knowledge of his contemplated mar- 
 riage. Whatever was his prompting motive to 
 this seemingly inconsistent design, it was not 
 passion. It appeared that he had not been 
 successful in finding out this object of some 
 long-past attachment. Perhaps it was com- 
 punction — a sense of duty in fulfilling some 
 old conjugal promise. Or it might be a self- 
 violence, by which he sought to resist some 
 inward passion that he rather dreaded might 
 grow out of one so unbounded as what he now 
 felt for this all- engrossing new companion, (com- 
 panion no more, alas !) than deemed dreadful 
 now. 
 
 So inconsistent is the mind with itself, that 
 he could not repress a strange touch of resent- 
 ment against the poor girl, for that very devo- 
 tion in prospect, of her help and hand and 
 heart to another, which would be the result of 
 his own act. Thus, though become, by the loss 
 of them, more peculiarly than ever a thing of 
 scorn and uselessness among men (the sad fate
 
 FIRST DAY. 145 
 
 of blindness) it was hardly to her^ as that re- 
 nounced helpmate, that he could turn for com- 
 fort, even in thought, under that mortifying 
 sense of subjection to all and beneath all men. 
 
 The poor separated girl, however, had no 
 such tremendous paroxysms of anomalous pas- 
 sion as thus shook the soul of Paull, to break 
 the monotony of her grief. Well and truly 
 wrote the unhappy Cavalier that his ^^mind 
 was a kingdom" to him : so is the heart to 
 the feeling young a world. As his firm and 
 fruitful mind made of his prison-cell a realm, 
 so did the heart, shut from its sweet resource 
 of indulged filial fondness, to her make of the 
 world a prison. For now, surrounded with all 
 that beautiful pastoral scenery could spread 
 before every sense, she was in the midst of de- 
 solation. And what her escape or respite 
 thence ? The few long- divided days she spent 
 with him in the midst of what in comparison 
 was real desolation — surrounded by all that sea^ 
 breakers, barrenness, and caverned coasts can 
 spread, to awe the senses and sadden the mind. 
 Yet, even there, her mysterious friend's silence 
 on so momentous a measure as his second mar- 
 riage, kept a restless pain, and sort of petty 
 ai^ger without mahce, at her heart. Probably 
 Paull had some objection, founded on the deli- 
 
 voL. I. n
 
 146 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 cate_, perhaps culpable_, nature of his old attach- 
 ment (which he dreamed of now renewing) 
 that prevented his disclosing it to her. 
 
 However this might be^ Ruth resolved to 
 probe this secret of his bosom, and one day 
 began, the moment she saw him, after some 
 days' separation, to rally him on the matter. 
 It is observable that the habits of a young 
 female, in the affair of love, and its various 
 states, exhibit some odd paradoxes. She never 
 speaks with so much drolling vivacity, or trifles 
 so sillily, as when touching on a su]:)ject most 
 deeply agitating to her secret heart. Again, 
 when happy in her hopes, when her love is 
 returned, or she believes so, when love's deli- 
 cious new-found fountain in her heart's former 
 desert void, is replenished by a thousand little 
 minute blisses of fancy, like a stream by the pris- 
 matic raindrops of a sunny shower — then how 
 silent, how taciturn, how full of seeming me- 
 lancholy she is ! Yet her pensiveness may be 
 detected as deep joy and a heart-full brimming 
 luxury of tenderness — rich as a river rolling 
 through a very sea of verdure, and snowy flocks, 
 and all rural wealth — and as silent. 
 
 On the other hand, when the fount is ebbing, 
 when her '^true love" does no more "run 
 smooth,^^ when her poor heart begins to fail
 
 FIRST DAY. 147 
 
 her, and the melting moments are few or over, 
 and deep doubts and pains, never dreamed of 
 before, begin to chafe her gentle mind, that 
 was lulled in so sweet a rest — then she grows 
 vivacious ! then that melancholy — that fine me- 
 lancholy ! — disappears. It is gone from her 
 soft pensive face, but gone, under a dismal 
 transfiguration, to hollow out her heart for a 
 ruin in which it may hide and gnaw; her 
 change thus resembling (if broken metaphor 
 may pass) that river still, when shrunk for want 
 of refreshing dews and showers, it sinks so low 
 as to brawl with all the rocks and worn gullies 
 which its rich brimming condition completely 
 hid, and went grandly sweeping over, reflecting 
 bluest heaven, and feeding the fat meads and 
 all their flowers — without a sound, save the 
 softest, that of its solemn flow. Now all is 
 sound and white foam, and leaping of little ca- 
 taracts, through the whole of its almost empty 
 bed. Yet a black and solemn pool, graver than 
 ever, is to be espied, now under oak root, or 
 hollow cavernous rock. 
 
 " I come to give you joy, sir ! " said Ruth, 
 dropping a playful courtesy. 
 
 "• Joy ? joy of what, child? " he said, rather 
 sternly. 
 
 " Of your marriage, that is to beJ* 
 h2
 
 148 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 '' Who said it is to be ? And if so, how do 
 you know it 's a matter to be merry about ? 
 You give me joy of my going to be married } 
 You offend me ! — But you only joke/' 
 
 ^^ Pardon me^" said she^, suddenly crying se- 
 cretly ; ^^ though you never told me — " As he 
 took her two hands in his^ a hot tear fell on 
 his handj and betrayed her weeping. '^Yes — 
 though it may seem wishing you joy in an odd 
 fashion to thus come with tears and sobs_, I do, 
 and I am glad^ because now I shall know that 
 you at least will not want a companion, when 
 — when — " 
 
 '^ My love, how you tremble ! sit, sit down I 
 When you 're a wife, you would say ? " 
 
 Ruth was long struggling with an hysteric 
 choaking. At last, she said, ^^I can't help 
 being queer when we first come together, hand 
 in hand, again. I don't complain — I can but 
 obey you, in giving this hand away, since you 
 want it no longer," and she cried more bitterly. 
 " If death will take it away from WiUiam 
 again, or not let me even give it, it's not my 
 fault. Grief does kill, they say — and when I 
 think how proud, how cold, how cruel, how 
 careless, this whole world of strangers round 
 you and me, is — oh, when I then think of us 
 two parting our lives — of throwing ourselves
 
 FIRST DAY. 149 
 
 asunder on that world — oh! is'nt it as if 
 two poor wrecked men on one raft, would split 
 that little saving raft into two, on purpose — 
 on purpose to be each alone— alone in the great 
 horrid sea ? " 
 
 "• We never, never will ! Kiss your father, 
 my sweet innocent ! nay, do ! Part ? Have I 
 been mad ? My own dear child, dry your eyes 
 — nay, let me kiss ^em dry. Stop here this 
 week — stop a month. Nay, but 1^11 come back 
 to the other farm. William must give you up. 
 At least, defer it, my dear : defer the matter." 
 
 '^ Defer ? " she said, sobbing. 
 
 Repeated retractations of Ruth's promise to 
 her lover, now drove him to a luckless resolu- 
 tion, in his thoroughly aroused resentment. By 
 both him and his sister it, was imputed to the 
 arbitrary caprice of the father ; nothing was 
 talked of in the little round of the hamlet, and 
 cots up the vale of Conwy, but the mysterious 
 conduct of father and daughter. Great pity 
 was expressed for the youth whose feelings 
 were thus trifled with, and at last he was in- 
 duced to consent to a plan, little consonant to 
 his former feelings, by which to do himsel 
 justice. 
 
 There was among the persons that a sea-life 
 had made his acquaintances, a dissolute fellow-
 
 150 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 townsman, a smuggler now — once away in a pi- 
 ratical vessel it was rumoured — at leasts his 
 own hints, dropt when he had been testing the 
 strength of his own spirit cargo, of desperate 
 doings which he could no otherwise have wit- 
 nessed, afforded the fair inference. He w^as 
 the leader of all loose and disorderly spirits in 
 more than his native town (Conwy). Bangor 
 and Beaumaris held many young men like him- 
 self, and a fight for a boat-load of spirits against 
 revenue officers, was matter of ambitious glory 
 and hope, rather than a thing to be feared or 
 secreted, by Davy Shakerly, or "Davy the 
 Pirate,'^ as he was called, for the Welsh com- 
 mon people never scruple to nickname one of 
 their class, with whatever epithet some point 
 in their character, true or imputed, seems to 
 warrant. Nor does the party fail to acquiesce 
 in this new baptism, perhaps finding it the 
 easiest mode of dealing with the afiront, which 
 at last comes to be considered as none, 
 any more than an Englishman's surname of 
 " Savage," or any similar. 
 
 To this man William had disburthened his 
 bosom and his heartburnings under the slights 
 put on him, and it was agreed that on the very 
 day which Ruth had fixed, should she be way- 
 laid, hurried off by a party of those youths, and
 
 FIRST DAY. 151 
 
 conveyed to a parish church in a lonely situa- 
 tion on the coast, there to fulfil her engage- 
 ment. The minister of this church was one of 
 that kind that formerly might be found dis- 
 gracing their calling, habitually intoxicated, 
 beggared by improvidence, and in all respects 
 sunken to the level of the lowest of their pa- 
 rishioners, who, in this instance, comprising 
 many smugglers and hardened characters 
 inured to a roving life both on land and sea, 
 formed a society more than commonly unfit for 
 the enjoyment of a Christian pastor. 
 
 As the readiest approach to this place was by 
 sea, but a few miles of which were to be crossed, 
 it was agreed on, rather in reckless love of a 
 daring frolic (if not with some further worse 
 view of the chief actor) than any friendly sym- 
 pathy with the jilted young man, as they called 
 him — that a boat with six should be moored se- 
 cretly in readiness, under Llanduddno's rocks, 
 while the party would proceed up the lofty 
 down above, and surprise the fair inconstant, 
 either while leading her father, or in the solitary 
 house, where were none likely to resist her ab- 
 duction. 
 
 The passionate sister, estranged from Ruth 
 through her love for her brother, was an ac- 
 complice in this wild plot, which was indeed
 
 152 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 considered as rather against her father than her, 
 and but a forcing her to her own wish ; for 
 Ruth had long so earnestly tried to remove 
 Sophy's suspicions of her loving some other 
 person, that she succeeded, and as the latter 
 clearly detected the fact that she did love some 
 one, she at last fully believed that Ruth^s dis- 
 tress all arose from her father's unreasonable 
 vacillations about her marriage. 
 
 " So now we 've settled all about this little 
 job, have not we ?'^ said David Shakerly to his 
 companions, forming a group in moonlight, that 
 stood on the strand in the shadow of one of the 
 towers of Conwy Castle. " Ye *re to be all at 
 word of command under me — is'nt that so, 
 Billy PauU ? " William assented — ^' And youVe 
 proof plenty of the poor girl's consent, and her 
 fixing the day, and I've seen the parson — a pre- 
 cious wet soul! and loves fun as well as he did 
 his tithe, till it was quested — what d'ye call it?' — 
 for his creditors. A precious jollification we '11 
 have on the wedding night, my lads, and you're 
 all witness that Bill agrees to my smacking 
 those pretty lips, that I shall stop pouting, as 
 often as I please when they are spliced." 
 
 The sullen vindictiveness of William's mood, 
 evinced in this to him unusual lawlessness of 
 daring, ill brooked even such a joke. His
 
 FIRST DAY. 153 
 
 trouble internally betrayed itseK, while he 
 thought of his delicate cousin^s even brief co- 
 ercion by these wild spirits, in spite of his faint 
 laugh and serious dissent from this pledge. 
 
 " Some of us must go along the steep down 
 there, coming to Llanduddno, by the way of the 
 old ruin of Dinas, and its caves, and the rest 
 in the boat row along close in shore, and moor 
 her under the cliiF. I'll see there be plenty of 
 cheer for body and spirit, beef and hung salmon, 
 and beer, and brandy too stowed aboard, for the 
 parson made me promise that; the devil a 
 comfort is there in his wild wet parish along 
 the coast, but fume of pitch paying the crazy 
 fisher-boats, and of the dead fish, or a few 
 broiling, though there 's hardly a hearth in it 
 so good as our old dames make upon the beach 
 here, to burn the sea- wrack {or kelp, of the wet 
 beach stones, nor a fire better than burns in 
 that—'' 
 
 " It 's a snug farm-house enough, I 'm sure,^' 
 said William, " where we're going to stop the 
 night, and the people friends to both her and 
 me ; but I 've sold some fat cattle on purpose 
 to meet a little expense, and I '11 pay all damage 
 of your enjoying yourselves with the old par- 
 
 H 5
 
 154 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 "What the d 1 makes the old dad so 
 
 loth to part with the wench ? " one asked. 
 
 "Part with her? part with the rhino you 
 mean/^ exclaimed Shakerly. " He likes to keep 
 her, because of that little property that his 
 dead wife, Alice, had in her own right, and she 
 left to the girl, when he was believed dead and 
 gone ; and so long as she's dangling with him, 
 he'll manage her money for her — you know 
 that, don't you. Bill, my hearty ? " 
 
 "I never said so," muttered WiUiam, "I 
 may have my thoughts — but I don't care what's 
 his reason for making a fool of me, whether his 
 reason's gone from him, or what it is ; but I 
 know I'll not be baulked a third time. No ! I 
 don't say so — my uncle's not selfish — besides 
 he 's not poor. But I don't think she '11 deceive 
 me again — I don't think there will be occasion 
 for this rough work — perhaps we '11 have a 
 happier sort of wedding, and keep it at home 
 as we ought to do, if he has any conscience or 
 feeling." 
 
 " Well, well, a week or two will prove," cried 
 Shakerly. ^' Wednesday week, my hearties ! out 
 goes the coble, up with a sail, when we 've 
 catched the little wild dove ; nothing like waves 
 to dance upon at a wedding, oars and sail, and 
 wind, and away ! Here 's the boy to stop her
 
 FIRST DAY. 155 
 
 cries and her heart's beating ! You can see us 
 from the church almost come all the way over/' 
 
 '' What ! is'nt Bill PauU coming in the boat/' 
 asked one. 
 
 ^' No^ you fool, to be sure not_, he '11 better 
 make his peace with her before night, if he 
 keeps out o' the mess of forcing her aboard, 
 won't he, d 'ye see ? " 
 
 ^^ I 've not yet quite made up my mind," said 
 WilUam, doggedly, "^ about that matter; but I've 
 made up my mind that the marriage day she 
 has baulked me of, more than once, shall come 
 now, come what will, the devil, or law, or 
 what not — but there '11 be no need, this time, 
 I hope." 
 
 Thus did disappointed passion pervert the 
 nature of this young man, which was rather 
 tender, and impel him headlong into a rash 
 enterprize, in which he was himself almost as 
 likely to become the outraged party, as the poor 
 girl he would thus entrust to that reckless 
 little band of half nautical, haK rustic, plotters 
 against her free agency, if not her virtue. 
 
 Great indeed is the contrast between the 
 Welsh members of the Established Church, 
 even up to this day. A mean and depraved 
 man, even illiterate and a drunkard (hard terms, 
 doubtless, to apply to any one of such sacred 
 calling,) is perhaps found next (parish) neigh-
 
 15G THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON, 
 
 bour to a worthy and upright pastor^ a person 
 of refined habits if not manners^ a recluse, and 
 a profound Celtic antiquary. 
 
 Such a contrast to the degraded character 
 alluded to by the party just retired, was pre- 
 sented in an elderly clergyman whose lonely 
 church was situated on the promontory of the 
 Creiddyn, that commot or hundred of Carnar- 
 vonshire, which, consisting of successive swells 
 and hollows of russet greensward, thinly stocked 
 with flocks, but diversified in part by woods 
 and ancestral mansions of fine antiquity and 
 solemn i>eacefulness, terminates by those two 
 majestic headlands, ^Hhe two Omie's Heads,'' 
 in the sea. This good man, living in the 
 humblest style, with a large family, all forced 
 to aid by industry his scanty resources, and 
 busying himself like a peasant with rural af- 
 fairs, did, merely by force of his known inno- 
 cence of life, and sense-corrected zeal in reli- 
 gion, perhaps even by his rustic and unclerical 
 exterior, command the sincere reverence of all. 
 No father-confessor, in other days, of one of 
 those monastic homes for broken spirits or 
 hearts, of whicn the grassgrown relics lurk in 
 the fine glooms of those antique woods in more 
 than one deep deserted dingle, ever enjoyed so 
 full a confidence, or opened hearts so easily to
 
 PIRvST DAY. 157 
 
 pour their troubles into heart rather than ear^ 
 
 as did the primitive vicar of . He had 
 
 long noticed the deep melancholy of Marma- 
 duke^s countenance^ since his return to the 
 Creiddyn^ a contrast to its pleased placidity 
 when he first came thither^ and was led by his 
 new-found daughter. He remarked his sitting, 
 hour after hour, among those hillocks that 
 mark the barrows below, containing human 
 ashes when opened, so numerous on many of 
 the maritime mountain sides ; and, though not 
 his own parishioner, the good man equally felt 
 concern and pity for him. But sympathy of 
 man seemed rather painful than soothing, for 
 the blind melancholic quickly shifted his place, 
 on the pastor's sitting down by him, or leaning 
 on the crook with which he followed his OAvn 
 sheep (a real shepherd) to talk with him in the 
 still noon. 
 
 Now, however, Marmaduke, it appeared, 
 resolved to avail himself of this gentle, pure, 
 and holy bosom hitherto opened to him in 
 vain. 
 
 He came by one fine twilight, with his stick 
 alone to guide him, and his glimmer of remain- 
 ing sight, to the priest's own house, a cottage, 
 but a comfortable one. The owner sate at the 
 foot of a sycamore, cutting prongs for hay-
 
 158 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 forks, which he was manufacturing for his httle 
 hay harvest, provident for future wants. A 
 daughter, of about Ruth^s age, was milking a 
 few ewes in a httle penfold, formed under 
 another tree, a hollow one, dead of age, while 
 she smiled with turned head to talk with her 
 father, and sometimes hummed a tune in unre- 
 strained cheerful freedom of love-intercourse. 
 One boy helped his father, an older son was 
 just to be descried across the little breadth of 
 green ground that sloped down to a sandy beach, 
 hanging a net where the yellowness of that cha- 
 racter of shore was heightened by the line of 
 all the West, flushed with a rich orange glow, 
 where the sun had lately gone down in serenest 
 majesty, leaving a sea hushed, as if the element, 
 inspired with awe, respected the monarch's rest 
 within those glorious curtains, not yet quite 
 faded from purple and flame- crimson, to that 
 more pensive tint. 
 
 Terrific as is that grand coast of caverns, pre- 
 cipices, and promontories, when lashed by the 
 mountainous waves, and shaking its heath and 
 gorse clumps in the unbroken fury of the winds 
 of the whole sea^s waste, now it whispered only 
 peace, even a holy peace, like some aisle so- 
 lemnly softly lighted up by a sunshine, tempered
 
 FIRST DAY. 159 
 
 by the medium of its antique painted glass, 
 into a softness like that of the moon. 
 
 Marmaduke, the moment he heard the girPs 
 voice, was retiring, as wishing to talk apart 
 with the father, and a tinge of red passed over 
 his browned cheek, whatever was the inward 
 cause, at hearing the endearing paternal voice 
 of the good man to his child. 
 
 " My love, here 's our neighbour Marmaduke, 
 he must come in to supper. Step in and set ano- 
 ther bowl and spoon, the milk 's ready in the 
 skillet, and warm, is not it ? Take down one 
 of the fine cakes from the cratch ; * run and 
 take his hand, Kitty, quick, dear, quick ! I 
 marvel at your liking to venture alone so 
 always, neighbour,'' he continued, turning to 
 the visitor, and taking his daughter's office in 
 rising to shake hands. Marmaduke sighed, 
 faintly repeating the word, like! "You're 
 just in time for supper, and here comes our 
 Hugh, he has been dragging the sea pools 
 among the rocks, left by the tide, and it 's odds 
 but he has a fish or some crabs. We won't keep 
 you a minute after, only a prayer and away, 
 and Kate will lead you." 
 
 * The lattice work shelf suspended from part of the ceil- 
 ing, and parallel with it, still correctly called by the Welsh 
 *' cratch," the old word — whence improperly our ** rack ; " as 
 in ** rack and manger."
 
 160 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 " No, thankye/^ he answered_," Vd rather not 
 that^ — and Fll sup another time — no need now 
 ' — IVe more need of the prayer, perhaps ! " he 
 concluded, unable to hide that which his 
 bosom was bursting to disburthen into one so 
 gentle and pious. 
 
 ^' My dear neighbour, your words and tone 
 take oiF my need of food too, I think. You 
 shock me — let us talk — ^butyou look exhausted ! 
 '' Oh,father ! '' the girl called out, '' I do think 
 here's that nasty Parson Smash — ' Swilly 
 Smash ' as they do call him, coming up the 
 sands.'^ 
 
 '^Why don't ye call him by his proper 
 name — Mr. Williams, child ?^' said the father. 
 '^^At least his calling should protect him from 
 aiFronts, though for the mati — alas ! Neigh- 
 bour, we'll walk on the sands if he's coming 
 hither — he is I see." 
 
 A robust old man in dark grey coat and 
 stockings of chocolate brown, the colour of the 
 dark sheep^s wool, soon appeared. His re- 
 mains of a fine, bold face, with its still frolic- 
 some eye, pimpled, and of a purply dark species 
 of ruddiness, bespoke a mountain constitution, 
 but an abused one, for it was bloated, and the 
 eye, clouded by constant semi-stupefaction, had 
 a goggling look in spite of its native fire, that
 
 FIRST DAY. 161 
 
 hinted of idiotic threatenings or apoplectic. 
 A striking contrast to the features of the Rev. 
 Mr. Llewellyn^ the streaked pink of whose 
 cheeks, though fainter, and whose countenance, 
 though exhibiting more years, yet with the 
 clear, beautiful, benignant, blue eye of perfect 
 intellect, beaming heartfelt kindness to what- 
 ever sentient thing it turned on, exhibited far 
 less of visible old age. 
 
 His slighter frame, also, in its elastic step, 
 and perfect ease of motion, was almost boyish 
 compared with the other, though that was not 
 infirm. Nor did the one in its unstudied 
 quick walk, lose anything in dignity thereby, 
 but formed on the whole a far more venerablfe 
 object than the other, with its measured slower 
 tread. 
 
 Before he reached them, Marmaduke inquired 
 whence came his nickname. ^' Smash,'* answered 
 Mr. L. " is applied, you know, to any one who 
 has been in the habit of breaking, or having their 
 goods sold up, as it's called; and this unhappy 
 brother of mine has been so often ^ sold up ' 
 — ^his living is under sequestration now — that 
 the thoughtless lads have so named him, and 
 altered also his real name William or Willy 
 into ^ Swilley,' as one always swilling. He 
 was once an exciseman -, but, hush ! "
 
 162 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 ^' Well, brother labourer in the vineyard ! 
 
 Peace be unto you ! What the d 1 be all 
 
 these chips? — carpenter- work? Brother Chip, 
 indeed ! But God bless ye, let your dainty 
 dear wench there, bring me one glass of the 
 real stuif from o'er the way (Ireland) sweet 
 whiskey ! or else brandy, for the sea brine has 
 fairly pickled my tongue till it's like a dried 
 neat's one." 
 
 ^^ I fear,^' said Mr. Llewellyn, ^' we used the 
 last drop for those poor wrecked men, the other 
 day, and I keep no spirits at all but as medi- 
 cine, and mostly it goes for that sort of purpose 
 on this melancholy coast. I never taste any. 
 But Kitty ! or Peggy ! bring a jug of ciorriv, — 
 or would ye prefer diodgrafel, Mr. Williams ? 
 The ash berries failed up the inner country 
 last season, but I think my daughter has saved 
 a few bottles." 
 
 Parson Williams made a face, as if crunching 
 a crab or sloe, at mention of the last liquor. 
 
 '^1 surely know that voice," Marmaduke 
 said; "is'nt that the Mr. Williams, Excise- 
 man, I knew at Llandifrydog near Dulas Bay? ^' 
 
 '^ The very same, and you the boy or lad, 
 Marmaduke, now no longer a lad, and I no 
 longer a Custom House watch-dog, but som' ut 
 better — the Reverend WiUiam Williams at your
 
 FIRST DAY. 163 
 
 service ; — it suits my temper vastly better to 
 watch a flock than a pack of smugglers. I was 
 a bit fond of their stuiF, so I grew to love them, 
 too^ and gave a hand to haul a few kegs up a 
 cliff. Where was the harm ? I 'U tell the truth, 
 and shame the devil — Government turned me 
 out, but the Church took me in — I was a 
 stranger and she took me in; so here's a 
 d — n for the Custom House, and the House of 
 God for ever ! and good health to ye both ! '^ 
 he concluded, his fat cheeks bulged by his 
 laughing mouth's extension of cleft, always 
 wide, while he raised to his thick lips the large 
 brown jug the girl brought, dropping a courtesy 
 as he took it (the invariable compliment oif 
 occasion of your taking anything presented 
 from the hand of a rustic Welsh maiden). 
 
 Marmaduke begged to speak apart to the 
 jolly priest. 
 
 " Did you know one Elizabeth Oliver, a very 
 fair girl, long ago, in your old neighbourhood, 
 who went to live at the town of Beaumaris, 
 across yonder ? I Ve made maay inquiries, but 
 cannot learn anything of her — I know she was 
 born where you was stopping one of your 
 terms." 
 
 " Ha, ha, ha ! looking after old sweethearts, 
 eh ? 1 warr'nt now, you mean ' Bessy Fair ? '
 
 164 THE MOUNT AIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 ' Bessy the beauty ! ' I never knew her 
 surname in my life^ but I think I see the white 
 creature now — a dainty creature — none of 
 you're ^mankind' women — but a wicked one 
 though ! — a melting creature she looked, ecod ! 
 I was young enow then to stare her into a 
 smirk and a fine colour, ' Bessy the beauty ! ' 
 God ! she was one, too ! '' 
 
 '^ What's become of her, did ye know ? " 
 
 "Ah ! poor thing, I lived to see her live to 
 be not worth looking at ! hagged and thick 
 complexioned, and so lifeless ! " 
 
 " But is she dead ? " 
 
 " Faith, I forget. Yes, I believe so, but after 
 I met her once when she was in service at 
 Beaumaris, walking in the wind on the sand 
 hills, one dark evening, and saw what an 
 altered poor devil it was, I never thought to 
 ask anything about her any more, not I. 
 I know she 's dead, though, now I think of it ; 
 I had it from her mother, but I never asked 
 how or where she died, not I. She was a poor 
 morsel for the worms, for all her nice, tempt- 
 ing, white plumpness was gone, even when I 
 saw her. I think she died single, though." 
 
 Marmaduke was silent and absorbed, while 
 he continued, 
 
 " Yes — ecod I I never saw such a change !
 
 FIRST DAY. 16'5 
 
 If you remember her^ you know her every bone 
 was as smooth covered as that pohshed top of 
 a rock yonder, that the sea has rounded beyond 
 any chisel, and the white surf just lets one see the 
 cut of, like, and no more, — and afterwards, my 
 stars ! her neck and collar bones and arm 
 bones, were like that naked, dry, rough reef 
 yonder. Now I can't bear angles and bones 
 detected about a woman's body, can you? 
 Flesh ! soft flesh ! ' Let the flesh hide thee ! ' 
 as the play-book says' talking about marrowless 
 bones — God help us, we 're all but things of a 
 day — ' all flesh is grass ! ^ Here 's good 
 
 health to ye both — and where will I find a 
 supper and straw the night? It's over late 
 for the fish boat I came in to stop for me, I 'm 
 too tired — I must rest — I must recruit/^ 
 
 Mr. Llewellyn, walking near, heard his 
 words, and ofifered a bed. 
 
 " Oh, my bed 's made o' summer nights 
 wherever there ^s clean oat-straw, barley-straw, 
 or fern, for that matter, and a dry beast-house. 
 I prefer it — I often wake there, and know 
 nothing how I came in, nor where I am, till 
 the low grumble of the cows startles me ! 
 The manger, my brethren — the blessed man- 
 ger ! we know who it was lay there, and God
 
 166 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 forbid vile man should think shame of snoring 
 in the straw beneath it/^ 
 
 Mr. Williams's habits rendered his latter 
 statements strictly correct, he being frequently 
 deposited, at the family^s retiring hour, in such 
 dormitory, which is indeed (as has been said) 
 no unusual night-lodging for the farm-servants, 
 male and female, in dairy districts. A large 
 space is devoted to housing the cattle, and one 
 of the narrow divisions formed by strong old 
 posts and rails, where the litter and hay is kept, 
 forms the chamber for these bedfellows of the 
 kine. 
 
 ^' The devil is, how to contrive for spirits ! 
 You have some good mvrriv, too, neighbour, 
 I must make a shift.'^ 
 
 " We'll bebacksoon; go in, and my daughters 
 will take care of you.^^ So saying, Mr. Llew- 
 ellyn led Marmaduke to the sands, across a 
 plot of russet ground, which though of marshy 
 nature was now dry and of a pleasant green, 
 with the singular species of the creeping dog- 
 briars, (if I am not in error in so calling them, 
 to represent their appearance,) whose miniature 
 roses {rosa spinosisima) , thus seen under foot, 
 instead of flaunting overhead, form a novel 
 beauty to a Sais (Saxon) visiting this secluded 
 point.
 
 FIRST DAY. 16*7 
 
 " I ^m always vexed/^ said the patient pastor, 
 "when that poor man comes over the bay; but 
 if one thwarted him, and shut our doors against 
 him, who knows how much malice and unchari- 
 tableness we might be accessory to instilling 
 into his heart and poor bhnd soul, so adding 
 to his deformity in the sight of God ? For a like 
 reason, I never argue with him, for knowing it 
 must be a chastening hand — pray God it be 
 not too heavy for the old man to bear ! — an 
 Almighty chastening hand, not my feeble voice, 
 that can alone reform him, w^hat would my 
 haranguing do, but add stubborness and ingra- 
 titude to his other faults ? '' 
 
 " You^re in the right, sir ! '^ Marmaduk^ 
 suddenly broke forth, " the least said* to an in- 
 corrigible or inevitable sinner, is the most 
 mercy.'^ 
 
 '^ And what would you with me, my friend 
 and neighbour?^' the other inquired as they 
 reached the strand. 
 
 " In truth, I know not what ?' said Marma- 
 duke in a hurried manner — '^ advice ; yet who 
 can advise about such a point? — Mere sym- 
 pathy, then, — pity — no — abhorrence ! yet I 
 
 wrong myself some human heart besides my 
 
 own to conceive what I feel, — but how can 
 another feel it ? Thafs the very point ! I
 
 168 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 pant after fellow-feeling in a pain^ a hideous 
 perplexity, the very essence of which is, that 
 my fellow men never did, never can feel it ! 
 The worst, the foulest are as newborn babes 
 and innocents in that ! Let^s go back! I may 
 make you hate me, shudder at me, but never, 
 never, make you a sharer, a comforter in my 
 most strange trouble ! One point that I 
 thought to ask advice on, I have had settled 
 even now, by talking with that man ; the other 
 is not one of human action — no matter of 
 choice, nothing to reject or admit — but some- 
 thing I am already a committed wretch in hav- 
 ing dared to divulge even thus far ! '^ 
 
 ^^ Sit on this ledge of rock, I entreat you,^' 
 said the pastor, trembling with the suddenness 
 of this seeming confession of some black sin, 
 from one whose religious feelings he knew to 
 be strong, and whose life, at least while on 
 shore, simple and innocent. 
 
 "Nay,^^ Marmaduke rejoined, with hollow 
 voice of suppressed anguish, " lead me to that 
 shadow. Is it the cliff, or is night thickening 
 eastward, that I see ? " 
 
 ^' No it ^s that horn of this cove which cuts 
 off the west and its light from our eyes.'^ — 
 
 " No matter — lead me into some dark Oh, 
 
 father ! let me so call you, for I know your
 
 FIRST DAY. 169 
 
 goodness^ your loving-kindness to me and 
 to all men, beyond any of these old holy men 
 that people used to confess themselves to, 
 and cry to ^ Father, father ! — oh, father ! what 
 shall I do ? ' As a mortal father, too, one blest 
 in a sweet daughter, as I am cursed in one, 
 I must ask you, what shall I do ? what can I 
 do? You cannot more doat on your sweet 
 girls at home, than I do on mine — yet '' 
 
 " What ! Ruth turned out so ill ? Cursed 
 in her? My heart bleeds for her, as much 
 as for you. Oh ! what has that once innocent 
 creature done? " 
 
 " Done ? Made mine a happy life were it 
 ending now, by but the short time she was' 
 with me here, where she must not lead me 
 longer ! Oh never think it was she that I 
 meant cursed me ! She 's innocence itself — 
 She has done nothing/^ 
 
 ^' Be composed, — trust in God's promise to 
 save the wicked man's soul alive, who turneth 
 away from the wickedness he hath committed, — 
 and so trusting, now trust me also with this 
 hidden sin that is so heavy in your breast." 
 
 ''\ talk and but mislead you," answered 
 Marmaduke. ''' I have no heavy sin here ! I 
 have committed none, or but what belongs to 
 the common evil of our natures. It is my very 
 
 VOL. I. I
 
 170 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 loathing of sinful thoughts, and promptings of 
 the foul fiend, that drives me to you/' 
 
 ''' You are in danger then of falling, — you 
 cannot resist some fierce temptation, or fear 
 you will fail in the conflict ? " 
 
 " Oh no, no, by allseeing God, no ! so far 
 from that — " 
 
 '^ Nay, nay, brother, keep to yourself the 
 nature of the temptation — I have no curiosity — 
 I can equally pray for your dehverance, know 
 it, or know not. It is before God not Man we 
 are to prostrate ourselves, and be ashamed. 
 Be not angry, however, if I say — be not too 
 bold, — '^Let him who standeth take heed lest he 
 fall.^^' 
 
 " Dear and good man — feel for me ! I have 
 nothing to confess ! the ideas, the feelings that 
 come between me and — and — that dear child 
 of mine — are horrors, ugly horrors, not temp- 
 tations. Tliis perplexed talk — this delirium, as 
 it must seem to you, is a faint picture — woe's 
 me ! but a shadow — of that confounding of 
 finest and foulest feeUngs, delicious and pure 
 thoughts, and loathsome ones, that are now for 
 ever fighting here, and here ! '' and he struck 
 his forehead and his breast. 
 
 '^ The only temptation I know, as such, is 
 the all-pure joy that tender fathers feel in their
 
 FIRST DAY. 171 
 
 dear daughters ! What you feel to yours — what 
 you'll feel to-night when you kiss her and say 
 ' good night, my love/ " That's what I alone 
 want. Is that a crime ? Thafs what I had 
 for a while, — that is what I despair ever to 
 have more ! Is that a wish to be confessed ? 
 Wish beside, Heaven that hears me knows 
 I have not — I would not live to have — I 
 would execute on my most execrable self, jus- 
 tice, bloody justice, could it ever amount to 
 that ! " 
 
 '^ And what deprives you of a father's hap- 
 piness ? I can't yet understand." 
 
 " You well may not, — I cannot clothe the 
 
 subject in its proper words, to startle a pure 
 
 and mnocent-t/ioughted father all at once. — 
 
 Ah ! Sir, you never dreamed of wishing that 
 
 dear child of your bosom, to be not the child 
 
 of your bosom ; you are proud to feel her your 
 
 own — you have her babyhood in your eye yet ! 
 
 / never knew I had that longing of my soul, 
 
 foolish longing ! granted, a baby girl, till in the 
 
 full beauty — yes ! my soul is not blind — the 
 
 glorious beauty of womanhood it burst upon 
 
 me, mixed with the blandishments of a sweet 
 
 child, and a helpless one ! If yet you are in 
 
 the dark, I '11 try to talk with something like 
 I 2
 
 172 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMEROK, 
 
 method, by the edge of the sea — but I detain 
 you from home." 
 
 '• Till midnight^ and welcome^ if I can but 
 lighten your breast a grain of its load. The 
 curate will not stir after his jug and pipe is 
 given to him, and the night 's sweet and soft, 
 Methinks I see a little, and I hope, that 
 whereas I at first feared that sin and shame 
 brought you to me, as a guilty man, the truth 
 is, that a virtuous horror of even its image too 
 close, and a delicate ^purity and over-dread of 
 even an involuntary step out of Nature's (or 
 our second nature^s) strict path, brings you 
 to me as your adviser, not confessor." 
 
 The conversation that followed was long and 
 low, as they walked on the margin of the sea 
 by starlight. The words of Marmaduke as they 
 returned, and he paused near the house, 
 
 were " So by that time you will have 
 
 weighed all I have said, and you will seal my 
 doom ? I expect your judgment as I might 
 that of heaven made audible, and will no more 
 think of disobedience to it, than to the voice 
 of God, whose minister you are. Two fates 
 depend on it. If my child must be a wife — if 
 we must live apart — if she ought to become 
 an unwilling wife, and keep her faith, if my
 
 FIRST DAY. 1 73 
 
 lieart bursty I ^11 not rebel against your verdict, 
 it shall burst alone ! " 
 
 As Marmaduke was proceeding homeward 
 led by the daughter^ they heard a caUing voice 
 behind, and Parson Williams caught him by 
 the arm. He was intoxicated, but not with- 
 out recollection of the business that brought 
 him, which was to extort from Marmaduke a 
 little money or promise of it, for some disclo- 
 sure which he had to make on that condition, 
 being indeed the secret of the abduction plot 
 confided to him by the young men of Conwy. 
 It was in vain however that he darkly hinted 
 or broadly declared some danger impending 
 towards him, which he for some silver would 
 avert. His own stupid state and the abstracted 
 thoughtfulness of the other, conspired to pre- 
 vent his receiving any serious attention. Mar- 
 maduke, plunged into his new state of limited 
 sus^Dcnse on a vital question, would not even be 
 persuaded to stop, and he retired muttering 
 something of threatenings, which the girl 
 laughed at, as deeming them his drunken 
 attempt to alarm. 
 
 They met Rutli, in great alarm at the lateness 
 of Marmaduke^s return, hurrying along the 
 path round a steep declivity. The clergyman^s 
 daughter spoke aiFectionately to her, the nar-
 
 3 74 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 rowness of the foot track obliging both to pause 
 as they met. Poor Ruth^ struck at sight of 
 her old office thus taken by another, could not 
 speak a word for a short space, though she 
 knew who was his guide. Perhaps it was a 
 prophetic pang, as the idea of his marriage was 
 thus forced on her, and that oi his future guide ; 
 though this it seemed was become groundless. 
 However she recovered speech at last, and 
 wiping one tear from her eye secretly, bade her 
 kindly good night, and for once more resumed 
 her too dear office. 
 
 The deep stillness of the summer night, 
 something of boldness which dark and a starry 
 heaven^s free vastness, and glooms of wood 
 and mountain (for they had to pass along the 
 skirt of an ancient wood inclosing a monastic 
 ruin), never fail to inspire, and possibly the 
 recent view of another leading him, these or 
 other deeper springs of female resolve and 
 strong emotion, possessed the forlorn girl or 
 this solemn walk. 
 
 "Suppose it possible," she began to say, 
 tremulously, but, as she proceeded, energeti- 
 cally, " that I should not be your daughter after 
 all ! no kin at all to you ! no more nearness of 
 blood than there is between two people that 
 may marry ; not so much of course as between
 
 FIRST DAY. 175 
 
 two cousins (and a burning blush suffused her 
 whole face) ; just as if I had been only at nurse 
 with Alice Woolstoncraft, or any poor soul you 
 was married to and directly forced away from, 
 as you was from her ; Alice no mother of mine ! 
 only ' make believe ' so, as children say ; and 
 could you love me afterwards, at all ? When I 
 should be nothing to you, not your Ruth, but 
 somebody else's Ruth, you would never care 
 for me more, would ye now ? ^' she said, affect- 
 ing playfulness, ^' Dear Marmaduke ! — a funny 
 way of calling my dad ! — make believe now I 'm 
 a poor strange girl on a sudden, you not my 
 father, she not my mother — wouldn't that be 
 being quite a stranger ? And now, do you love 
 me?'' 
 
 This was a wild start of feeling, in that so 
 softening hour, and that love-whispering scene 
 among the fragrant lime trees, and low twitter 
 of sleepy birds, which the next moment made 
 the impassioned girl start at herself, and wish 
 to God she could recall the words ! They 
 smote her like guilt, in spite of truth, that told 
 her she but veiled the simple fact as a wild 
 hypothesis; for Marmaduke had not even 
 been /05/er-father to her, and his wife had not 
 been mother, and he had never even witnessed 
 or shared at all her part of foster-mother
 
 176 THE MOUNTAIN -DECAMERON. 
 
 which alone was hers. What was he then to 
 her ? Even the shadow of affinity existed not^ 
 and a brief period^s mockery of a relationship 
 alone stood between them as a barrier to mu- 
 tual warmer passion. Ought it to divide them, 
 so needing as well as loving each other ? Might 
 not such a singular advent of a tie render it 
 only firmer, fonder, perhaps purer, for the short 
 delusion ? 
 
 All these questions flew over the mind of her 
 companion as a crowd of some flying things 
 might do across a sky of leaden hue, which, 
 whether black as night, or snowy as silver- 
 . winged sea birds, the aroused eye cannot dis- 
 tinguish ere all are past, and nothing is again 
 except that sky of leaden hue. And yet they 
 have disturbed its calm and monotony. Not a 
 word of answer had he the recollection to make, 
 so busy v/as he with this wild train of thoughts ; 
 but when it had passed over, then the (imagined) 
 actual nature of their connection, and his own 
 diseased state of the imagination, induced by 
 excess of fondness, and consisting rather of 
 ominous fancies of future unhallowed fires, 
 than any present mischief, like that sky as- 
 sumed an added gloom. Fancy for the very 
 first time had been set loose, not by his own 
 thoughts but by her innocent fears of utterly
 
 FIRST DAY. 177 
 
 losing his aiFection, forcing way from her full 
 heart. But fancy would not return to her re- 
 straint. And '^ Suppose it possible she ivas not 
 my daughter after all!'' This echo of her 
 Avords was destined never mor€ to be silent in 
 the heart of Paull^ idle and dreamy as they 
 seemed, till that agitated heart found a sweet or 
 dismal rest — the rest of lovers haven or lifers 
 end. 
 
 1 5
 
 178 THE MOUNTAIN-DEC AMEKON. 
 
 CHAPTER VIL 
 
 And she, beside her, with attention spread 
 
 The decorations of the maiden dead. Crabbi:. 
 
 Mr. Llewellyn desired^ as the first step^ 
 to learn the state of Ruth's heart toward the 
 youth whom we may continue to call her 
 cousin. To ascertain this he took what was 
 perhaps the wisest course; he promoted a 
 greater intimacy between his own daughter and 
 her, not doubting that the latter would quickly 
 betray to her friend and bedfellow (for he 
 almost forced her to make a home of his house^ 
 for a time) what she might hesitate to avow to 
 him. The result^ however^ from the singularity 
 of the situation (of course unknown to the kind 
 hearted pastor) proved the source of complete 
 delusion. The young woman was already 
 aware that Ruth had been a playfellow for a 
 time with her cousin, and had been on the 
 point of marriage with him, if not still so, 
 though the time had been repeatedly deferred.
 
 FIRST DAY. 179 
 
 To conceal the passion of love, even when 
 toward a worthy and approved object, seems 
 almost an instinctive impulse in the young and 
 modest female. Hence, not even to this artless 
 girl did Ruth do more than joke about her feel- 
 ings, when betraying as she did even to her 
 artlessness that powerful passion, which in such 
 temperaments, especially when joined to such 
 secluded habits as were this solitary orphan 
 girPs, exhibits itself under the form of melan- 
 choly. Indeed, it might be doubted whether 
 this passion, however cognizable by others, was 
 not inhabiting her bosom under a complete dis- 
 guise even to herself. However this might be, 
 Kitty, the friend, when she learned that thiy 
 cousin, this former playmate, was really an ob- 
 ject of her esteem and great regard, very natu- 
 rally imputed to him alone all the inquietude, 
 the sudden sighing, the love of loneliness that 
 marked her friend^s manners ; and never doubt- 
 ing the fact of her extreme love for him, be- 
 lieved that some secret embarassment, or dread 
 of the match being broken off, was the only 
 source of these symptons. 
 
 Mr. Llewellyn having in an easy way ehcited 
 this conviction of the girl, from her common 
 conversation, resolved to adapt his promised 
 advice accordingly.
 
 180 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 Like most persons who solicit advice on any 
 question connected with strong feelings on their 
 own part, Marmaduke PauU had rather wished 
 a supporter of his already formed resolution, 
 than a guide, when he applied to the worthy 
 priest. Probably he sought more than sanction 
 of, even coercion to, that parental course, which, 
 though resolved on, he wanted firmness to 
 adopt; this coercion would be supplied in the 
 co-operation of so venerated a man^ and thus 
 prevent further procrastination of his nephew's 
 happiness, of whose right to complain Marma- 
 duke was painfully conscious. 
 
 Hence^ it was with very slight emotion that 
 he received Mr. Llewellyn, coming to him one 
 bright day, as he sate in the sun, on a sod hil- 
 lock open to the sea, though aware that he 
 came to decide the point as to the marriage of 
 Ruth. Mr. Llewellyn conceived that the tran- 
 sition to the conjugal, and to the maternal, state 
 in his daughter, would most readily banish that 
 melancholic dream, rather than reality, of an 
 impending hideous passion, while it would pre- 
 vent all occasion for the sacrifice of her beloved 
 society needful to his heart as that was become. 
 At the same time, he deemed it prudent to give 
 the father time to prepare his mind for the 
 partial separation, by extending the interval
 
 FIRST DAY. ISl 
 
 prior to marriage^ and took upon himseK to ac- 
 quaiot the young man with the circumstance. 
 For Wilham^ in sullen anticipation of Ruth's 
 retracting her consent^ at least for a time, once 
 more^ remained at the farm in the vale of Con- 
 wy, while she, ashamed of her own vacillations, 
 was not displeased to be out of the presence of 
 an angry and troubled lover, and his yet more 
 angry and watchful sister. 
 
 Mr. Llewellyn took care to conceal any im- 
 pression he might feel, that the step he advised 
 was rendered necessary by Marmaduke's con- 
 fession of feelings, but founded his advice on 
 the fact (such he believed it) of the young wo- 
 man's languishing passion for the youth, orrly 
 thwarted by her reluctance to lose the society 
 of a lately found parent. 
 
 From the first of this interview to the last, 
 nothing betrayed any strong emotion in the so- 
 litary man's breast, but a paleness, so marked 
 in its steady usurpation of his whole face, 
 through all its weather marks and bronze of 
 climate, so nearly amounting to the complete 
 bloodless marble hue of a corpse, that the kind 
 pastor felt alarm ; but checked himself, in the 
 very motion of his tongue to inquire if he was 
 ill, from fear of embarrassing him, his blindness 
 allowing his visitor fuller scope for unchecked
 
 182 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 observation of that ghastly change of counte- 
 nance. 
 
 Ruth had been often on the point of break- 
 ing the promise she had made to her dying 
 foster-mother, while yet living with Marma- 
 duke in the midst of smihng scenery, where all 
 tended to banish the dreary and dark impres- 
 sions of her earlier days, and the remembrance 
 of that unhappy victim of too fond and faith- 
 ful a heart. But now that she again moved in 
 the same wild and solemn scenes, inhabited the 
 very house of death, except while visiting the 
 vicar's family — now that a melancholy too 
 much akin to what she had witnessed and pitied 
 in her, was settled down over her own young 
 heart and mind, all was revived — Ruth Wool- 
 stoncraft was become again almost the desolate 
 and imaginative creature of early sorrow and so- 
 litude, that watched eternally from a wild shore, 
 a wilder sea, for an imaginary father. It was 
 natural that now, sharing somewhat of the 
 pains, she should pity more, and respect more, 
 the dying charge of that hapless woman, who at 
 once protected, and blighted, and perverted to 
 dreary romance of character her own youth. 
 Though still associating with Marmaduke, and 
 sometimes permitted to lead him still, she was 
 conscious of a cold restraint in his manner, for
 
 FIRST DAY. 183 
 
 which her innocent mind had not the remotest 
 suspicion of a cause. This, joined to his final 
 formal sanction to her marriage, confirmed her 
 belief that her society was no longer much 
 solace to him ; and from the time of the cler- 
 gyman's giving his '^ casting vote" on that mea- 
 sure, Ruth's state became one of deep, though 
 closely secreted dejection. 
 
 The common gossip and '^ news" of such a 
 lonely seaside locality is of a solemn and sad 
 cast, widely differing from those of inland dales. 
 Wrecks, and dead men, and new-married fisher- 
 men lost directly after marriage, are common 
 topics. The blowing up of a storm at night- 
 fall has agitations for more than the insensate 
 bosom of the high heaving sea, and produces 
 effects by the hearth, and in the hearts of the 
 seafaring men's kindred, not dreamed of in 
 internal situations. The wildest midnight 
 wind in those is but wind-beaten-roof, noise, 
 and a shaken casement, but here shakes nerves 
 and sets hearts beating awfuUy, while a cry of 
 the lost is listened for and fancied in its resist- 
 less rushing from the open sea. 
 
 Ruth loved more than ever to listen to the 
 wild tales and fancies, imported from other parts 
 or home-begotten, which the fisher wife, occu- 
 pying a hut on the beach side called "the
 
 184 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 Marsh of the Monks/' a poor widow, widowed 
 by the element almost washing her threshold 
 still, loved to tell, as told before by her hus- 
 band, long ago drowned. From her she heard 
 some of those superstitions, of common Celtic 
 origin with the Welsh, which prevail in Britany, 
 that province so kindred in its features and its 
 language to her native mountains, and full of 
 antiquities of similar Druidic origin. On the 
 eve of the day of All Saints, the souls of all 
 persons that have died by shipwreck, of all the 
 unrestored dead, of all still rolling as skeletons 
 or bony atoms in the bosom of the deep — all 
 these congregated souls arise to the surface, 
 passing and repassing in mighty crowds, but 
 slight and fragile in their aerial shrouds, as that 
 topmost sea-foam which the wind's fury 
 snatches from the crest of a wave when break- 
 ing over a reef or assaulting a headland, and 
 whirls for a moment to deposit again in the 
 gulf whence it was produced. These, thus 
 skurrying about in the troughs of the sea, are 
 seeking the souls of kindred lovers or spouses ; 
 every billow is the hearse of a soul, and when 
 a meeting occurs, a plaintive sound is to be 
 heard, mixed with that of the sea, but the suc- 
 ceeding wave dashes the commingling spirits 
 asunder again, like that mere snowy froth, and
 
 FIRST DAY. 185 
 
 thus at last this melancholy '^gathering" or 
 ghostly " feast of souls" is disi:)ersed^ and its 
 usual dead loneliness returns to the awful 
 Bay des Trepasses (Bay of Departed Souls). 
 Such was one of the mournful imaginations 
 that from early childhood had possessed the 
 mind of Ruth^ familiar to most coasts where 
 wrecks are of frequent occurrence ; and neither 
 that bay of Armorica, nor that shore of the 
 same province^ known by the name of Corn- 
 wall, on which it is situated, exceed in mourn- 
 ful grandeur or solitude the part of this horn 
 of the Bay of Beaumaris on which she was 
 born. On the green landward slope of either 
 Orme's Head, or on the dark green morassy sod ' 
 between, she could sit a whole day together, 
 tending the few sheep of Alice, from the sun's 
 rising to its setting, and see nothing but that 
 sun ; hear nothing but the mighty murmur of 
 the expanse it travelled over, unless a sea-gull 
 and its cry, or a sail whitening at soundless 
 distance, like that wild bird's wing, or the bleat 
 of her own sheep. 
 
 All these old tyrannies of superstitious me- 
 lancholy now resumed their sway with tenfold 
 force over her mind, in the agitated interim of 
 preparation for a loveless marriage. And it 
 happened that the indulgence of them gave rise
 
 186 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 to a very atrocious rumour against her and her 
 supposed father. The wild youths to whom 
 William had in his fury so rashly entrusted his 
 purpose of redress, presently propagated a re- 
 port of a dreadful passion, existing on the side 
 of the latter at least, which prompted his refusal 
 of his daughter's hand. Whoever believes 
 those in the higher spheres of life to be the most 
 addicted to scandal, probably is little acquainted 
 with the peasantry of any country. No sooner 
 is a rumour (the more revolting the keener the 
 zest of its welcome) originated, however vile, 
 than it is propagated by those at the plough, 
 and those at the loom, by hedge-side and on 
 the village green, with as much avidity, merely 
 for the excitement sake — as can be, or ever 
 could be the trip of some envied court beauty, 
 or sanctified monitor in high life; even they 
 who sincerely regret the shame of the parties, 
 being unable to conceal it, or at least let the 
 scandal stand still, but pass it on, from the 
 same foolish love of surprise and surprising 
 others. 
 
 Now it happened that our humble heroine 
 had more than once betrayed an anxiety to 
 conceal the nature of some sort of needlework 
 which she often pursued, sitting under a tree 
 or hollow bank's shade, while watching a cow
 
 FIRST DAY. 187 
 
 or two graze, or sometimes in the shadow of 
 rocks, on the beach, when the persecution of 
 the noonday flies would drive the cattle thither, 
 all stai*ding motionless on the sands, preferring 
 not to eat, to eating in their company on the 
 marsh. She had been observed to huddle 
 away her work on some linen into her basket 
 of rushes, or move away with it, when some 
 female neighbour approached. The gentle 
 girl was drooping, wan, even sunken eyed, in 
 her embarassment between deceiving her dear 
 Marmaduke, and violating the last wish of the 
 dying — the last degree of cruel impiety, in the 
 universal opinion of the Cambro-British rural 
 population, even to this day. The wild infa-. 
 mous whisper caused even those who loudly 
 exclaimed against it, to watch very narrowly the 
 pair so scandalized, and this privy preparation 
 of some linen necessary, could not but quicken 
 the eye of such observation. All things put 
 together, and seeing that some mystery did 
 exist, it was no such extravagant, however 
 cruel, a suspicion that a fatal passion had sub- 
 sisted on one side or both, that the consequence 
 was impending, that this closely concealed 
 handiwork was of the kind that provident mo- 
 thers prepare in good time ; to which was added 
 the fear that the simple sea-faring youth, come
 
 J 88 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 home to turn farmer, was likely to become the 
 protector of a pretended premature spurious 
 oifspring, too horrible to be expressed but by 
 shrugs, and knitted brows, and uplifted eyes. 
 
 The modest and virtuous daughter of the 
 rural clergyman did nothing but cry when this 
 dreadful rumour reached her. She was of a 
 character quite alien to the passionate tender- 
 ness, and spiritualized dreaminess of the orj)han 
 child of the Orme's Head solitude — the per- 
 plexed love-devoured, yet all-innocent woman of 
 a heavy secret, and hopeless future, deceiving 
 alike him she loved at least as fondly as a 
 daughter could, and the youth, whom (though 
 not a cousin) she valued as a friend even more 
 than as a relation. 
 
 Kate (or Kitty, as her father liked best to 
 call her,) had herself observed this secresy in 
 Ruth, about some work she was busying herself 
 upon, and to her simplicity it seemed to fear- 
 fully strengthen the frightful possibility. She 
 was become (as natural with solitary girls of her 
 years) romantically attached to her new friend, 
 whose more gifted mind and more intense sus- 
 ceptibility, wrought a difference, as of age, be- 
 tween them, though difference there was very 
 little. She looked up to her, yielded well 
 pleased an ascendancy to her mind, which her
 
 FIRST DAY. 189 
 
 friend was far from arrogating^ and even un- 
 conscious of, and now^ to secretly view this 
 loved, respected companion with a dismal and 
 foul suspicion, was too much to be borne, or 
 smothered in her young affectionate bosom ; 
 so when Ruth once more happened to thrust 
 into her basket (always taken on her arm when 
 any one came near) this source of fearful 
 thoughts, so little suspected by herself, and be- 
 gan plying her knitting needles, fancying Kitty 
 not to have espied her real occupation from a 
 distance, the poor girl stood dumb before her, 
 her eyes fixed on the shut basket, unable to 
 speak, and at last fell into an hysterical sob- 
 bing. The long-delayed issue of the agitated 
 little colloquy that ensued, was a disclosure to 
 Ruth of " the wicked ivicked story that they 
 have got all about the valley of Marmaduke^s 
 t'other farm, and even round the Creiddyn, up 
 to Llanduddno ! " as she said, crying. Nor did 
 she omit the little secret of what she had that 
 minute hidden, of which so much had been 
 made by the ^^ womankind." 
 
 This disclosure did not so much astound or 
 incense the innocent victim of slander, as im- 
 press on her a conviction of the necessity of 
 avowing her real situation to Marmaduke, of no 
 longer assuming the disguise of a daughter ; or.
 
 190 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 this at least seemed to her previously over- 
 burthened mind, a fresh cause and apology for 
 a step she was daily, hourly on the point of 
 taking, but still dared not, could not, fearing to 
 lose his love wholly, fearing to be disbelieved, 
 fearing the mighty change in their intercourse, 
 fearing she knew not what, but shrinking from 
 the undefined future, even when something 
 whispered her of possible vague bliss to thence 
 (after a time) dawn on their new strangeness to 
 each other's blood. 
 
 After a dumb pause, in which she held both 
 hands of the poor pained girl, who was begging 
 her not to think that she had credited the tale 
 a moment, Ruth, opening her little basket, as 
 soon as she could speak and weep, made the 
 other sit down by her on the little green bank, 
 where she had been sewing, and drew forth, 
 not those little preparatives, the first defence 
 for helpless humanity, come crying for such 
 help, such defences from its new element (heard 
 sorroAving as soon as heard, and seen in shi- 
 vering distress as soon as seen,) but a far dif- 
 ferent and sadder something — poor humanity^s 
 very last need, and almost last gift from human 
 hand — an almost finished shroud — her own ! 
 
 Yet it was with no purpose of any violent 
 deed that the melancholy girl had been thus
 
 FIRST DAY. 191 
 
 employed^ but only that snch dismal occupa- 
 tion concurred with her mood, her forebodings 
 of life blighted — perhaps ill usage from a disap- 
 pointed husband, incensed at her sorrows — of 
 probable early death — and with the dismalness 
 of memory. 
 
 " It has been long begun/' said she, sobbing, 
 " often laid by, once I thought I 'd burn it ! — 
 it was not very long I kept that thought, (and 
 she sighed profoundly,) and now again I do feel 
 some pleasantness in making it ready — I '11 tell 
 ye how I came to think on it. I watched Ahce 
 — I watched my mother, you know, Alice — all 
 alone, two nights. The second night, that was 
 a calm night — I thought I could work, and 
 not do nothing but cry all night, so I began 
 upon some shifts I was making (our mountain 
 heroine, be it observed, was too modest to be 
 A^\Q,2X^-tongued, secundum morem of modern 
 city damsels) and as 1 looked, by our green rush 
 taper, at that last dress of the poor soul, a 
 queer thought took me — And / will have such 
 an one too ! I am sure to want that — these I 
 may never — for I wished to die very much 
 then, I felt so forsaken — you may know some 
 time how forsaken ! So I just knelt down by 
 her, and reverently, as you may judge, raised 
 her poor arm, and took pattern of the strange
 
 192 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 ruffled shocking garment^ and cut out just such 
 an one, instead of the shift I was next to cut 
 out; and I made a deal of it that very night, 
 measuring myself — and I try it on, like a gown, 
 when I am low-spirited, at the glass ; and I 
 can tell thee, dear girl ! 1 think it's no such odd 
 or wild thing at all, for a poor friendless kind 
 of maiden to provide herself with this — nay, 
 don't turn your head away — what is there in it? 
 — because, who knows Avhat coarse man-like 
 old iish-wives, with perhaps great lubber boys 
 in the same room almost, may lay out such 
 poor girl in such a wild lonesome place ? Why 
 not be ready stripped, and ready drest for the 
 earth's green bed, as well as some beds which 
 
 perhaps are not half so '^ 
 
 That very evening, Ruth, writhing under the 
 cruel wrong of that slander, and prompted by 
 some resistless impulse besides, disclosed to 
 the surprised clergyman the secret of her birth, 
 and broke a promise made to the dying !
 
 FIRST DAY. 193 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Oh, let me now possession take 
 Of this — it cannot be a dream ? 
 Yes ! — now my soul is all awake — 
 These pleasures are — they do not seem ! 
 And is it true ? Oh joy extreme ! 
 
 Now all I seek 
 
 Is mine 1 Wiat glorious day is this ? 
 Now let me bear with spirit meek 
 An hour of pure and perfect bliss. 
 
 Crabbe's prorMq/*Z)r^«wy. 
 
 If Marmaduke betrayed little emotion on 
 forming the final resolution to give his only 
 helpmate to another^ leaving himself helpless, 
 companionless, loveless, as sightless, his de- 
 meanour, on being astonished by Mr. Llewel- 
 lyn's communication of a new state of relation 
 to the dear object, sufficiently proved that his 
 emotion had been all within — too mighty for 
 outward expression, and its relief. The kind 
 visitor found him, as almost constantly he 
 was to be found, sitting alone, by one of 
 those green mounds (without a carn^ which 
 chiefs alone could claim) with an oblong hol- 
 low, which mark the tumuli of the commonalty 
 
 VOL. I. K
 
 194 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 among the ancient Britons^ and abound on 
 the treeless declivities of mountains near the 
 sea, as the cam and mound together shew the 
 site of some chief's more memorable sepulchre. 
 — Mr. Llewellyn was shocked to see the change 
 in his appearance, wrought by but a very few 
 days, since his previous interview with him on 
 occasion of tendering his advice. He slowly 
 and aifectionately broke to the altered man, 
 whose whole aspect had assumed something of 
 gaunt ghastliness and wildness, the extraordi- 
 nary revelation of his supposed daughter. As 
 Alice had been perfectly sensible, and her 
 known extreme desire of offspring made it the 
 more consistent, there could exist no reasonable 
 doubt of the actual fact that his wife had thus 
 sought to delude him, and that Ruth was not 
 her child. The poor girl herself had indeed, in 
 the woman^s extreme apathy towards herself, 
 a strong further confirmation of the fact, had 
 any been required. As soon as the blind 
 father — and no father — had time to fully grasp 
 the whole multiform bearing of this change in 
 his connection with his sole friend and com- 
 panion — the rushing across his brain and heart 
 of a thousand novel emotions — of mixed regret 
 and hope, broken and repaired ties — loosed and 
 more firmly bound affections — the father ba-
 
 FIRST DAY. 195 
 
 nished for ever — the something, yet undefined, 
 of less tranquil character — by no means come 
 to take its place^ but rather somewhat of trou- 
 ble^ shame^and ominous fear, instead — all these, 
 and all at once, were too much — the pallidness 
 which before revealed inward only^ was now 
 followed by outer convulsion. '' For God's 
 sake, your hand, sir ! " he said, tottering^ after 
 having leaped to his feet on receiving the in- 
 formation. ^^ Darker than ever ! I ^m giddy ! '^ 
 and before the old man could prevent, he fell 
 on his face along the green hollow, almost, 
 indeed, "measuring his body's length" in that 
 shallow grave indicating a real one below, thus 
 proving the agony of his previous state^ calm 
 as it appeared^ by the shock of its departure ; of 
 a ray of hope that the solitude, the horror of 
 that state might yet be escaped from, and she 
 for whom he lived, might yet be (under some 
 mode of communion) still his life's companion. 
 Marmaduke had been apprised also, by some 
 busy neighbour, of the vile slander raised 
 against him and her, and his smothered wrath 
 and wounded ipind had not burned or ached 
 the less for burning and aching all inwardly. 
 The bitterness of this injustice would be rather 
 increased by this new state of things, since such 
 a declaration as the denial of Ruth for his OAvn 
 K 2
 
 196 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 cliild^ would infallibly be seized on as a corro- 
 borating evidence^ as if prompted by shame 
 and fear of consequences, thus for the first 
 time promulgated when the rumour was be- 
 come rife. This idea might also have its effect 
 in further confounding his mind on the sudden, 
 so as to produce the violent effect just described. 
 When Marmaduke re-opened his eyes, on 
 the old clergyman's sprinkling his face with 
 water he had raised in the hollows of his hands 
 from a small rivulet that crept by the sj^ot, his 
 first exclamation was, '^ Ah ! sir, what was this 
 you murmured in my ear ? or did I dream ? 
 Ruth no child of mine? — Another father? — 
 God ! I can never believe it ! — Not a father ? " 
 
 Mr. Llewellyn felt the pleasure of a good 
 man in this evidence of his neighbour's purity 
 of secret mind; for grief and regret for the loss 
 of a daughter, were the first visible signs of 
 returning consciousness. The darker idea of 
 some unholy flame, instead of proving its 
 reality, by now leaping out of the sphere of 
 troubled dreams into life, as the barrier was re- 
 moved, had vanished as a dream; but the /a- 
 ther's love, distinct and pure, survived the or- 
 deal, and came forth mourning over the loss 
 of its object, instead of being swallowed up in 
 any more selfish species of passion. 
 
 A very short space of time, however, sufficed
 
 FIRST DAY. 197 
 
 to rouse the most violent agitation of new- 
 born sentiments in a nature so keenly im- 
 passioned^ a mind so void of all other ob- 
 jects^ but that soft sweet one (whether daugh- 
 ter^ or whatever else, indissolubly now twined 
 with every thought,) a heart with all its feel- 
 ings utterly unemployed, and run to waste 
 except upon her alone. Actual terror hung 
 over his next meeting with this dear darling 
 of his heart, under her new strange character. 
 For the first time (after some interval) his 
 thoughts dared to dally with the idea of holding 
 this object, this last light in his darkness, 
 this sole living spring in the world's waste — 
 by some other tie than the filial. So strong, 
 however, was his horror of admitting as his 
 bosom^s guest a warmer feeling by any possi- 
 bility, prematurely, that he could not bear to 
 again meet her, without some demonstration 
 to his own mind, of the fact newly revealed. 
 This also he panted to acquire, that he might 
 more effectually repel the calumny of the rustic 
 slandermongers. A single day's inquiry made 
 in that district among the elder people, helped 
 to confirm the assurance he sought ; for many 
 who had not chosen to disturb the mind of the 
 returned seaman before, now stated that a vio- 
 lent suspicion had always existed, that his 
 unhappy wife had procured through the con-
 
 198 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 nivance of a " cunning woman" and midwife, 
 the child of some other parents, and had never 
 really become a mother. It further was recol- 
 lected that when she quite despaired of her hus- 
 band's return, she had almost in terms con- 
 fessed, in moments of despair and utter indif- 
 ference to all things in a world she longed to 
 leave, that she had never known the pains or 
 joys of a mother. 
 
 The situation of poor Ruth, after having 
 made this long delayed avowal, was pitiable. 
 Remaining at the house of the benevolent mi- 
 nister, she fell into a sort of hysterical convulsed 
 state with fever, in which she could not sleep 
 night nor day. Mr. Llewellyn, who, in common 
 with many of the priesthood in that day, had 
 acquired some knowledge of medicine, pro- 
 posed her seeing Marmaduke, whose anger for 
 her long delusion of him she would have it 
 must be implacable. But, when sitting by her 
 bed, for she was unable to sit up, with his 
 daughter on the other side, he would tell her 
 that Marmaduke was coming, she covered her 
 face, where the colour rose rapidly, with both 
 hands, and the rustic physician (not without 
 the tact of him of old) keeping his finger on her 
 pretty wrist, found a furious action of its tell- 
 tale font suddenly aroused by the announce-
 
 FIRST DAY. 199 
 
 merit. She could not be persuaded that he for- 
 gave her, that he would ever see her more — 
 but from his own lips ; yet she trembled, and 
 exhibited the above symptoms at the idea of 
 an interview under this — to him new species of 
 attachment. But her most agonising suspense 
 was on the point of her marrying William. This 
 was the watchful Kitty's discovery. Sleep was 
 by no means to be procured by art, soothings, 
 or even the exhaustion of nature, without that 
 personal assurance on both those points which 
 she so desired. Yet the pastor's skill warned 
 him of danger from the agitation of an interview 
 so tender and so dreaded. Meanwhile, as no 
 peril of life impended from this purely nervous 
 state of over- wrought feeling and suspense, 
 Marmaduke was not unwilling to have this 
 breathing time (as it were) for the completion 
 of this bosom-revolution — the rapid conversion 
 of a father's love into something more agitating 
 in expectation, but not yet a whit less pure, but 
 sweetened to his very soul with the delicious 
 feeling that now, how warm soever his tender- 
 ness, they need not part. Sleepless as she, 
 but fast turning his thoughts to life and happi- 
 ness again, Marmaduke revolved the fact over 
 and over, and still could hardly receive the 
 overwhelming wonder in his mind, that the
 
 200 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 beautiful creature that loved him so, that he so 
 loved, was not his child ! Neither had she, nor 
 (his nature so told him) would she become other 
 than his daughter for some length of interval 
 yet ; the feeling was too rooted to be suddenly 
 supplanted. His tender doting but brooded 
 over the white beauty of her idea, in passionless 
 expectation of Time's work, which might here- 
 after evolve thence some higher but yet unfelt 
 rapture; as the mother-bird broods over the 
 white passive envelope of her future offspring, 
 in the deep tranquillity of the nest, in the coo 
 green chamber of the moonhght fohage, with- 
 out a touch of that fond perturbation, and jea- 
 lous watch, she will hereafter find and keep 
 over the httle flutterer fully developed, broken 
 forth, and become her companion. 
 
 By the advice of their common friend, at last, 
 Marmaduke wrote as follows, and she received 
 the slip of paper thus inscribed, with the added 
 sanction of passing through that good man's 
 hand; for Marmaduke had by practice pre- 
 served some power over the pen, notwithstand- 
 ing his blindness. 
 
 " Daughter of my heart still ! I have nothing 
 to forgive. I believe you only deceived me at 
 first, in pity to a dying woman, and afterwards
 
 FIRST DAY. 201 
 
 in love to me. We will not part. Nothing 
 but the hand of death shall now divide your 
 hand from mine, my sweet guide, my child, my 
 all in this world. Be comforted and live for me, 
 and so that you live with me, make whatever 
 your own innocent love likes of your poor blind 
 friend, 
 
 "Marmaduke." 
 
 No sooner had this scrap been delivered to 
 the poor girl in her sad vigil of a third wholly 
 sleepless night, than the change from her tossing 
 misery and gloom to a sweet subsidence of it 
 all, was like that of a sea, from rolling and 
 groaning in the evening of tempest, to settling 
 down into such a many-coloured bed of azure 
 green ripplings in blue morning, as the lark 
 might almost mistake for the deep field of 
 wavy grass and flowers where it may build its 
 nest. After weeping and smiling at once, she 
 folded the little note and deposited in the 
 sweetest casket in the world, the snow of her 
 bosom beneath the bed-clothes, and almost in 
 the act fell into a sweet sleep, whence she did 
 not wake till day was high on the green hill 
 fronting the casement. 
 
 Marmaduke awaited but her restoration to 
 sleep and quiet ; then set off, without risking an 
 K 5
 
 202 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 interview^ on a journey, guided by little Hugh 
 Llewellyn the vicar's boy (the fisherman), the 
 object of which and its issue is shown in the 
 next chapter.
 
 FIRST DAY. 203 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Each heart was anxious till it could impart 
 Its daily feelings to its kindred heart : — 
 * * not a day appeared, 
 
 When with this love they might have interfered ; 
 Nor knew they when that passion to reprove, 
 Now guileless fondness, now resistless love. 
 So while the waters rise, the children tread 
 On the broad estuary's sandy bed ; 
 But soon the channel fills, from side to side, 
 Comes danger rolling with the deepening tide ; 
 Yet none who saw the rapid current flow 
 Could the first moment of that danger know. 
 
 Crabbe. 
 
 Marmaduke had obtained a certain clue to 
 the residence of a person important to his 
 views, being no other than the ancient woman 
 of the obstetric (also the black) art, who had 
 been the agent in the strange yet tender stra- 
 tagem of his deceased wife ; one not wanting 
 precedents excited by the same feeling, in 
 English records. Very recently one of these
 
 204 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 figured in our Criminal Calendar^ where the 
 child-stealer was prompted solely by such a 
 strong desire as actuated Alice Wools toner aft. 
 
 It was not known, however, whether Margery 
 Foulke was still living, but her last residence 
 was in a wild moorish part of the country many 
 miles beyond Conwy, close to the wild village 
 of Yspitty Jeuan, or Evan. That spot, once an 
 hospitium of the Knights of St. John of Jeru- 
 salem, and a sanctuary, became afterwards, 
 from the impunity it afforded to crime, a pesti- 
 lent den of outlaws, robbers, and murderers, 
 who issued forth to ravage the adjacent country, 
 and secured themselves to laugh at their pur- 
 suers the moment they regained the holy 
 precincts of this abominable refuge for the des- 
 perate and bloodguilty. These also had how- 
 ever long passed away, like the order of Knights 
 their predecessors. 
 
 A keen curiosity, as well as the wish f o make 
 assurance doubly sure, now impelled Marma- 
 duke towards this place, to converse with the 
 aged woman who knew the whole early history 
 of his dear Ruth^s welcome intrusion, and to 
 hear some particulars of his lost wife's conduct, 
 whose fraud he could not but pity and forgive, 
 remembering its motive, and the extreme dis- 
 appointment he had not concealed from the
 
 FIRST DAY. 205 
 
 poor woman under his want of offspring, and 
 female in particular. 
 
 Following the eastern side of the river Con- 
 wy, on the wilder road to Cerig y Druidion, an 
 extensive wood received him first, smelling of 
 firs, and cool and murmuring with profuse fo- 
 liage of sapling oaks, beeches, some chesnut 
 trees and mountain ash, the valley and river 
 deep below, the ancient woods of Gwydir 
 across the stream. But presently an ascent 
 occurred, and all this sylvan smiling of land- 
 scape was exchanged for the frowning of sterile 
 and treeless morasses, bounded only by lumpy 
 mountains of ugly and desolate aspect. Some 
 venerable woods at last varied the scene, « 
 deserted mound rose green, where a castle had 
 once stood, and thus pursuing with his young 
 companion a track not unknown, and, though 
 all was dusk confusion to his eyes, not without 
 that strange perception of its changing features, 
 so unaccountable to others, but common to the 
 blind, Marmaduke reached the hamlet of 
 Yspytty Jeuan, and proceeded to inquire for 
 one Margery Foulke, an aged woman from 
 Anglesey. 
 
 In the more sequestered parishes of Wales, 
 persons whose change of residence brings them 
 through and beyond an intervening town, may 
 almost be said to '^ lose caste ; " that is, they
 
 206 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 are long considered as strangers tliere^ and 
 denizens of the dingle or hamlet they have left. 
 They may be likened to a river which has to 
 pass through a lake which^ although only a col- 
 lection of waters, as the town is of the same 
 natives, confounds the individuality of the 
 former. We may pursue the figure, and remark 
 that should a darker tinge or some foulness 
 belong to the river water, then it becomes con- 
 spicuous for some distance in the waters of the 
 lake it sullies with its visit, although all is con- 
 fusion still, and the stain soon loses its strength 
 of dye, and at last is lost in its blending with 
 the watery mass. Thus, if the migrating new- 
 comer bring some ugly stain of character along, 
 its deep dye hardly survives among the indo- 
 lent and stationary rustic folk of the town, but 
 some confused distorted evidence of it long re- 
 mains. A cotter that was thatching his house 
 first answered our traveller's inquiry, by calling 
 to a woman. 
 
 ^^ I say, neighbour, here 's a blind man wants 
 that old woman that was from beyond Conwy, 
 that went to live up the mountain among the 
 mawn * pits, and used to read the stars — is she 
 alive yet ? 
 
 ^^ I don't know, no loss if she be gone to her 
 
 * Mown is the blactcer peat deep beneath the surface of the 
 round.
 
 FIRST DAY. 207 
 
 account— a sore wicked one by what we do 
 hear ! but she was not of our country. I guess 
 she's dead, for I ha'nt set eyes on her since the 
 Spytty boys worried and killed her black dog— 
 if he could be killed and it were not ' some- 
 thing that ^/iowZc?'/?/ beMn the carcase of the 
 beast. We were pretty sore afeard to go nigh 
 it, even to throw it in the bogwater.'^ 
 
 " Why what was her crime? You foolish wo- 
 man, you seem to know nothing about her, yet 
 you can abuse her in her grave for what you 
 know," Marmaduke said harshly. 
 
 Marmaduke had wholly lost the rustic ' vul- 
 gar errors ' as well as dialect in his long ex- 
 patriation. This, joined to that native dignity 
 that always marks the man of powerful intellect, 
 and that energy which equally attends the cha- 
 racter of powerful passions and exalted thought, 
 (for such in his unexalted sphere was the 
 speaker,) made the housewife beheve him some 
 person of power, maugre his dusty garb, and 
 she lowered her tones with that cunning sup- 
 pleness that as readily truckles to even possible 
 superiority, in the sturdiest rustic as in the 
 most servile courtier. 
 
 "Well, I've nothing to say, but if the poor 
 soul be dead, peace be to her body and soul too,
 
 208 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 I say, if she be some ^sib' * to ye ! Child-mur- 
 ther 's a sore job, ye ^11 allow, sir ; and so is bap- 
 tising naked new-born things ere they can be 
 clouted, in the DeviPs name instead of God 
 Almighty's, and so making the puir craters 
 their lives long the Devil's own : — but ye 're 
 right enow ! I know naught aboot her, not I ! 
 Be she such a curs'd un, or be she the like of 
 us harmless folk, I 've nothing at alt to say ! " 
 
 "Murder? Child-murder? Where? When? 
 I never heard of that round the Creiddin/' 
 exclaimed he. 
 
 " Oh ! " said the youth, " but she wasn't of 
 our side of Menai, you know. Long agone, 
 when my mamma was alive, I can just remem- 
 ber her talking about the old midwife woman 
 that always had attended her, when father had 
 a curacy on that side o' the water, being almost 
 ducked to death, and worried out of that 
 country, for having killed a child, or something; 
 and for being a witch ; and for nursing a devil on 
 her lap, in shape of a black dog, and for sinking a 
 boat with two fishermen, by help on't, and 
 
 " Ha ! ha ! " resumed the old cottage-wife 
 with glee, ^' the lump of a lad knows all about 
 it, and her good doings, ye see, mister Sir, 
 whatever's your name, (and she leered arch 
 
 * Kin.
 
 FIRST DAY. 209 
 
 triumph at him) but I 've naught at all to say ! 
 the body's a stranger to we, dead or alive." 
 
 ^'Why she can^t live on the mountain alone, 
 she must come to some place or house ? " 
 
 " Likely so,'^ the woman of the wild village 
 rejoined, doggedly. '^^But she 'd nah need 
 either. She was helped from the Great House, 
 (she alluded to the mansion of Voelas Hall, 
 then in possession of the ancient Wynne family 
 of Gwydir,) had goat's milk or cow's milk what 
 she would, and oat-cake and brandy when she 
 was almost gone o' the cold, sent up by the 
 cowherd or the shepherd boys, going up the 
 hill, by the good ladies. Grand folk always 
 show their grandeurs and goodnesses to the 
 like o' such offcast and foreigner sort of folk, 
 because it shows the grander in them, seeing 
 every body knows it 's they keeps 'em alive. 
 Now my poor man, or I, who works at the 
 Great House regular, may be among the bogs, 
 or in this poor place that 's no better much, 
 long enow ere cow-boy or swineherd stoops 
 under our eaves, to bring a nice basket of fiddle- 
 faddles — but, bless the grand good ladies ! I 've 
 nothing at all to say ! We maun quarrel with 
 our daily bread.'^ 
 
 ^^ You must go, if you're for going," said the 
 man on the roof, ^' up yonder dip of the hills.
 
 210 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 there, look you, my lad ! You see those things 
 like hovels on the top ridge, those are piles 
 of peat drying, and it ^s all black turbary up 
 there. But keep you along under that brow, 
 where you see a wood like, but it 's only deep 
 gorse, that looks so black, and you'll find a 
 sort of a road, and then you '11 pass some Carn- 
 eddau, graves of the ancient men, you know -, 
 then you must round that far rock, and you '11 
 come to a great bog ; mind your footing round 
 it, and if you look well all round, (there ^s no 
 trees to stop you,) where they 've been digging 
 the mawn, you '11 spy a hovel, under a great 
 bluff dingy head of half earth half dark-green 
 rock, that hides it just like a molehiU. Indeed 
 ye '11 never spy the house, only by some bit of 
 blue smoke, in all the brown look of the hill, 
 (it ^s no the hill top neither) and if she be dead 
 and gone, why, it ^s like there '11 be no smoke 
 to see ; for nobody '11 live in such a house after 
 her, it's only like a ' hafodty ' * to say the truth. 
 But if so be, you 've only to keep down and 
 down, through the hwlch that you '11 see begin 
 
 * " Hafod " summery "ty" a house. A summer-house, 
 similar to the Scottish shealing, a temporai-y shelter for 
 herdsmen and shepherds during the summer season.
 
 FIRST DAY. 211 
 
 there and the fine green country all shining 
 deep down^ and make for that. You Ve no 
 business this way at all, but that 's the best 
 and clearest way you can take now ye 're here." 
 This " good and clear way ^^ led the two 
 travellers up to what a Saxon " pleasure tra- 
 veller ^^ would have fancied the very heart of 
 the mountains, solemn from very desolation, 
 but which was but really the wi\d-ish suburbs 
 of the real hill top desert. As the acute lad 
 cautiously led his companion, the latter ru- 
 minated on the' imputations on this unhappy 
 woman, which had, as usual, some grounds of 
 truth, at least the possible and bloody portion 
 of the scandal. The suspicion of being in- 
 compact with the Enemy of man, as well as 
 sometimes with fairies (^or the Tylivyth Teg), 
 in making proselytes in the one case, and 
 changelings in the other, did formerly attach 
 very seriously to the innocent and needful art 
 and practitioners of midwifery, among the 
 mountaineers of Wales. The parties whom 
 poverty, or other cause, had induced to resist 
 the pleadings of nature so far as to permit this 
 woman to transfer their new-born babe (af- 
 terwards our heroine Ruth, now at this mo- 
 ment timidly permitting, in her recovered state, 
 a little better acquaintance with a passion long
 
 212 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 opposed) privily to the residence of Alice^ to 
 be adopted as hers^ escaped suspicion but for 
 a time. The mockery of an accouchement 
 could be better effected in so lone a spot, and 
 with so lone and singular a woman, who re- 
 pulsed all society, than could its reality be con- 
 cealed, in that more frequented part across the 
 bay, where the mother resided. 
 
 In short a rumour became rife, that an event 
 which the old midwife disguised as of that pre- 
 mature character which gives it another name, 
 had been a real child-birth — and, as the child 
 had disappeared, the inference was dark against 
 the parties, or the midwife, or both. But as 
 some long interval occurred before accident 
 partially betrayed the secret, no further stir 
 was made in it; but the old woman lost at 
 once her character and her calling. It was at 
 the intercession of Alice, and probably, of some 
 of her gold also, that the persecuted woman 
 refrained from clearing herself, by producing 
 the young girl Ruth as the vanished infant be- 
 lieved to have been murdered. However this 
 was, after several visits, (probably of com- 
 plaint, and demand of money for concealment,) 
 which Ruth herself might faintly remember, as 
 has been shown, the '^ cunning woman '^ ap- 
 peared no more on that side of the Conwy, and
 
 FIRST DAY. 213 
 
 the time of her disappearance was, no doubt, 
 that of her ill-usage by the mob, and driving 
 away, alluded to by the youth. 
 
 " A wild chase this ! ^^ remarked the older 
 traveller, when at last they surmounted the far 
 (not furthest) ridge, and the prospect of deso- 
 late grandeur burst upon them 5 the black 
 pitch-like pits of the peat soil, the dismal har^ 
 vest of the dark brown formal cocks of that 
 substance, (such a contrast to the delicious 
 haymaking scene !) the stretching away of the 
 treeless, hedgeless, lifeless, wearisome same 
 of morass and russet withering green, and the 
 reddened or yellow dead or dying fern, and 
 some huge and unscaleable rocks, harbouring 
 screaming kites and birds of prey, alone af- 
 fording any trace or sound of life. 
 
 '^'^ A wild chase and wild place ! It blows cok^, 
 and I can hear the Avind whistle, as well as feel 
 it ; though I warrant there ^s nothing but the 
 gorse and heath for it to make a noise with — 
 but it will make us enjoy horne, won^t it, my 
 boy ? '' 
 
 Marmaduke involuntarily laid a stress on 
 the word, and laughed out the sentiment 
 from the very exultant heart's core of him, 
 with such a glee, as almost startled himself, 
 and summoned his thoughts to the vale of
 
 214 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 Conwy, not the mournful ill-omened home of 
 the promontory — ^back to the real soft sweet 
 object in which that burst of ^ome-felt bliss (in 
 expectation) originated, — and yet those thoughts 
 were not a lover's! It was but the blessed 
 ease of conscience and heart he experienced, 
 in feeling that he might now vent all his full- 
 ness of fondness on that cherished creature, 
 without a pang, or self-disgust, whatever might 
 be the intoxication of the senses. 
 
 The peculiarity of being everywhere led by 
 the hand (with its frequent pressures) of such 
 a being, seemed to effect a sort of exchange of 
 feelings between them, without either losing 
 one feeling of their several own. A sweet de- 
 pendence, allied to that of helpless infancy, 
 was reciprocal. 
 
 And now in his new happiness did Marma- 
 duke believe that he could have been quite 
 content with the paternal and filial attachment 
 only, could that be enjoyed without interrup- 
 tion. 
 
 They had met no creature in their way, even 
 up to the moment of reaching the very rock 
 and huge mound described as the site of Mar- 
 gery^s house, neither had any smoke been dis- 
 coverable. At last they stood on an eminence 
 of seared sod, with huge stones and deep
 
 FIRST DAY. 215 
 
 gorse clumps, and which sunk abruptly before 
 them. 
 
 '^ We must go back, we 're out of all track 
 here," said the lad. " I think she 's surely dead; 
 there was no smoke all round everywhere; and 
 I don't know the exact spot now we 're at it, 
 though it looked distinct as a reef out of the 
 sea, a bit ago. '^ Lord have mercy on me, 
 what 's that sound ? " cried the boy, bending 
 his ear to the earth, when he saw behind an 
 angular bit of crag, a deep hole with stakes, 
 whisped round with fern stalks ; felt a feeble 
 creeping up of some warm vapour in his face, 
 invisible in the hght as smoke, though smoke it 
 was, it was so trifling ; and then a voice said 
 from under their feet, with the langour of illness, 
 ^' What be ye wanting there ? " the sound tak- 
 ing strange hoUowness thus ascending out of 
 the earth, as it were, up the aperture. The 
 hut was in fact beneath their feet. A great 
 weight of earth and turfs had been piled as 
 roof to this subterranean abode, partly formed 
 of the excavated mound, probably an ancient 
 tumulus containing ashes of the dead, (gene- 
 rally to be found in these regular hillocks, 
 with an adjacent earn, such as was seen close 
 by,) and for the chimney or funnel use had 
 been made of a rift in the mountain stone. A
 
 216 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 few steps would have brought them to the 
 brink of this wild roof, with deep gorse for 
 eaves, beneath which was the cavern -like en- 
 trance, marked by a few white peat ashes 
 thrown forth, a pitcher, and water dipped out 
 of the dingy sluggish little stream, such as 
 creeps through the soil of peat, moss in such 
 places. 
 
 They found their way off the house top, 
 round and down and into the house itself. A 
 shrivelled face, smoked, blear-eyed, yet deathly 
 wan, through that mask of smoke, stain, and 
 wrinkles, was just visible, as coming forth, dis- 
 turbed, not alarmed ; and a decrepit form bowed 
 almost double with age, so that it seemed an 
 exertion to her to raise her visage enough to 
 gaze at theirs, came moaning towards them. 
 
 " I 've come for ye to tell my fortune, mo- 
 ther," Marmaduke began, jocosely, partly be- 
 cause he was happy, and more from an awk- 
 wardness in commencing his business. And 
 now he begged the youth to divert himself 
 outside, while he addressed her. But the 
 woman was too near that grave she seemed to 
 desire as much as to need, to be alive to jokes, 
 or enter into the spirit of his address. 
 
 ^^ Go, go thee ways, foolish man ! " she mut- 
 tered, despondently, '' think ye, if I could tell
 
 FIRST DAY. 217 
 
 fortunes, I could not mend 'em too, somehow, 
 — and then, would / be here ? No more need 
 to deceive folk now ! I 'd best make my peace 
 with Him I can't deceive/' 
 
 " Let me pour you a thimble-full of rum, 
 good dame, I 've a drop in a bottle.'^ 
 
 " None o' your rum for me ! What 's brought 
 ye here ? I can't see but just none, — was n't 
 there two on ye ? You talk like a foreigner, 
 and are free, like a sailor-man. If ye come to tak 
 my goods, here be none for ye ; and if ye seek 
 my life, so as ye will show the mercy you'll want 
 some day, and stop while I say a prayer or two, 
 mayhap ye '11 take it just as easy as my death- 
 hour will, or easier : so it 's not much matter 
 what ye want, puddering and tramping over my 
 head. God's will be done ! Lord ! forgive me ! " 
 
 Enfeebled in mind and frame, through 
 solitude and sorrow and age combined, she 
 mingled human anger with human sullen re- 
 signation. But her hearer was shocked, and 
 by degrees, after blowing up her embers for her, 
 and almost forcing on her a cordial, won on her 
 so as to elicit a few answers to his questions. 
 
 ^^ Did you know a person they called AUce 
 Woolstoncraft — Paull was her husband's name 
 — a man that was press'd once ?" 
 
 VOL. I. L
 
 218 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 ^^Tobe sure I did/' 
 
 ^^ Did she ever bear a child while he was off, 
 that was christened Ruth ? Didn't you come 
 as midwife, Margery ? '' 
 
 The old woman tried to view his face. 
 
 ^'^ Who are you, come to tempt me to tell a 
 lie again, and anger my God that has heard 
 too often my curses of rage, as well as my many 
 wicked lies ? I have told that lie, you seem to 
 know ; but why are ye so curst/^ now, as to 
 want me to tell it o'er again ? She never bore 
 babe, not she, manchild or womanchild — never /" 
 
 A mournful, a childless pain, shot across the 
 heart of her hearer at this full last demonstra- 
 tion of the fact, which had yet, but a little 
 before buoyed that heart like a reprieve from 
 death ! His eyes swam in tears, and he was 
 ready to ejaculate, " Farewell my daughter ! So 
 ends my dream of 2k father ! " 
 
 And here, having brought the reader to this 
 point, I shall for the present return to the 
 Orme's Head, rather after the devices of my 
 own fancy in story-telling than any more ap- 
 proved method, to follow the fortunes of the 
 young woman there walking unconscious of the 
 danger that approached her with the critical 
 Wednesday of her (broken) engagement. 
 
 * Cursed, a Welshly term of two meanings ; 1st, frowardly 
 harsh ; 2ndly, cunning or adept.
 
 FIRST DAY. 219 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 That female form — why is she there ? 
 Alas ! I know her — Oh, begone ! 
 Why is that tainted bosom bare ? 
 Why fixed on me that eye of stone ? 
 
 ****** 
 
 As if he stood bewildered in a dream — 
 
 Or that some power had chained him for a time, 
 
 To feel a curse, or meditate a crime. • Crabbe. 
 
 As Ruth was walking alone on the down 
 overlooking the sea^ she was suddenly accosted 
 from behind by some one^ and William grasped 
 her arm. His whole frame shook with passion 
 as he exclaimed^ " Ruth Wools^ncroft, will you 
 keep your promise this time ? No nonsense ! 
 Yes or No ! " 
 
 Ruth was just revived after nervous confine- 
 ment and debility. The sweet air of the thymy 
 down and the fresh breeze of the sea^ a blue 
 sky, and more than all, a revived heart, flut- 
 tering with vague emotions all tender and all 
 voluptuous — these made her frame of mind at 
 that moment placid in the extreme, and her 
 l2
 
 220 THE MOUNTAIN.DECAMERON. 
 
 bosom overflowed with love and good will to 
 all things. Never had she felt warmer friend- 
 ship for him^ or less of anything akin to love, 
 
 '^ Dear William ! " she said smiling, but pite- 
 ous, ^^ don't look so ; would you frighten me V 
 
 ^^ Nor shame you ; but compel you ! Do me 
 right ! will you promise and vow to do me right ?^^ 
 Ruth grew alarmed, and looked around the 
 lonely vast bank of the sea-side down, and up 
 and down the beach below, but all was solitary. 
 '^^ Aye^ you may look '/' he cried, growing paler 
 and paler with fury. " You^re in my power ! " 
 
 William was of quiet demeanour; she was 
 inured. to his habits at home, quite familiar, so 
 that she soon recovered herself, and couldn't 
 feel fear of him, he being not at all rash or 
 passionate. "You would not hurt me, Wil- 
 liam ?^^ she said with unaff'ected conciliator}^ 
 tenderness, taking his hand. Strange little 
 member, with thy fantastic five polypus-like 
 feelers, — oh, hand ! When delicate (a cottage 
 girl's may be), when of tender touch — when 
 warmed with the blood flowing from the heart 
 we think ours, or pant to make so — what tongue 
 of man or string of lyre ever possessed such 
 thrilling eloquence ? His eyes of flashing rage 
 melted that instant, but shrunk down, ashamed 
 to show it.
 
 FIRST DAY. 221 
 
 ^^ Not a hair of your head/^ he murmured. 
 " Oh ! good heaven ! nor yourself, surely ? 
 You don^t threaten to do yourself a mischief ?" 
 she exclaimed^ for something of the despair of 
 love-melancholy that moment passed so black 
 over his countenance, as the feeling and the 
 real thought of killing himself before her crossed 
 his brain, that it communicated itself to her as 
 by actual voice. 
 
 Her terror, beyond suspicion of feigning, 
 now so affected him, that he could not speak, 
 but only reluctantly drawing back his hand, 
 shook his head, while the high heave of his 
 breast and deep groan rather than sigh, seemed 
 to say — ^^ My life that you will not share, why 
 should I value ? '^ 
 
 At last he faltered — " If my living is of con- 
 sequence to you, dear girl, why — '' h^ could 
 not finish the sentence, or pride rose again to 
 prevent. ^' I speak truth,'^ he resumed more 
 calmly, but stern, '^ and tell you again, you re in 
 my power. Will you fulfil your promise?" 
 
 ^^ I cannot — I cannot, dear good William ! " 
 she said, bursting into tears of pity for him. 
 
 "You will not, you mean?" 
 
 "Be my brother, my dear friend, and I'm 
 sure I can be your loving sister, your fond
 
 222 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 friend; I am, William — anything you wish, 
 in that comforting way — but I cannot, will not 
 be your wife, William ; if you hurl me down 
 to that shore of stones, I cannot^ so it's no 
 use V 
 
 With quivering lip, betwixt crying and pas- 
 sion, he looked black melancholy with fierce 
 resolve full in her face. 
 
 ^^ By the living God up there ! and by holy 
 church ! and by the hours we spent together 
 when younger, and all the hopes I've built on 
 you of a happy life, — you swear by all these 
 you will not be moved by one or all, to do me 
 justice, to keep your promise ?" 
 
 " Forgive me ! " she said, now in the utmost 
 trepidation -, " don't be rash — at least, let me 
 see my Mar — my father again; he^s on a 
 journey.'^ 
 
 '^ Woman, I but ask you, did you speak as 
 in God^s presence these words, that you will 
 not be my wife ? " 
 
 '^ If you kill me — yes ! I will not deceive 
 you again, if I die for it — yes ! I thank you 
 from my heart for having this fondness for me I 
 I cherish you for it, — fear for you like your 
 own sister, and if you murder me now, I for- 
 give you now, and God forgive you 1 and still
 
 FIRST DAY. 22a 
 
 I say never, William ! Before God I said and 
 say — I cannot be your wife^ poor William ! ^^ 
 
 William took a turn^ fumbled for something 
 in his breast, then revealed his face to her 
 again ; but the hand she thought to see clutch- 
 ing some deadly weapon, but held a handker- 
 chief to his eyes, while the other seized her's 
 and kissed it — " And I am your poor William 
 yet? Pity 's poor fare in place of love, yet thank 
 ye for even that, sweet Ruth ! For ever, and for 
 ever then, good-bye, Ruth — and now, forgive 
 me. I said you was in my power ; thank God 
 you are ! for I'll save you.'* 
 
 The remorse-stricken young man with irre- 
 solute purpose had hurried to her neighbour- . 
 hood to at least be present, so as to prevent 
 any brutal treatment during her abduction. 
 But her innocent looks, her tenderness, her 
 unprotected state, inspired a better, nobler pur- 
 pose — to save her from his own machinations. 
 He told her all — the boat and its crew that 
 would be moored to receive her, the hour, and 
 how to avoid the ambush laid for her. 
 
 If William was not to know a transport of 
 warmer, yet one of some pure feeling, generous, 
 melting, mournful, scarcely less delicious, was 
 at least his own on this occasion, while the 
 young pair of fond friends at least, now ex-
 
 224 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 changed mutual forgiveness ; she for his pur- 
 posed cruelty, he for her breach of promise 5 
 and he talked as anxiously about preserving 
 her from those ruffians as if he had never been 
 the head of their councils. He was too well 
 acquainted with David Shakerly's suspicious 
 character to confide in his obedience to himself, 
 although engaged in his cause, when once in 
 action and pouncing on the prey, like a vicious 
 hound that will not be called oif from the deer 
 when it has seized it, however docile before. 
 
 WiUiam had come provided, therefore, with 
 a brace of pistols he had brought from sea, and 
 was now lurking long before the appointed 
 hour, on this side of the bay (Beaumaris), while 
 the confederates believed him waiting them on 
 the other, at the church of the sea-side village. 
 But he also was in turn deceived. For Shak- 
 erly had formed a villainous design of making 
 the prize his own, when once in a boat on the 
 lonely great waters, and conveying her to some 
 other part of the coast. Their boat was already 
 stealing along the edge of the calm sea, and he 
 and another prowling about the peninsula, de- 
 signing to seize her on the first opportunity of 
 surprising her alone. 
 
 As they walked together, William now pro- 
 duced the deadly weapons, showed her they
 
 FIRST DAY. 225 
 
 were loaded, and dallied with a sort of sad 
 pleasure he found in her terror, by pointing 
 one at his own forehead, in half melancholy 
 sport, half inward dreadful earnest. She wept, 
 and spoke with all the softness of tenderness ; 
 and pleased, though not deceived into hope, 
 William bore to walk with her hand in hand. 
 
 The discovery of her being no relation to 
 Marmaduke, the latter had desired to be con- 
 cealed till after his journey, that he might have 
 the power to assert it on some ground of his 
 own knowledge, beyond that of Ruth's asser- 
 tion of Alice's dying declaration. 
 
 It was directly after this display of the pistols, 
 and their beginning to walk hand in hand, that 
 they suddenly, by rounding a little point of 
 green rock, met Marmaduke and his young 
 guide coming home. 
 
 ^^ Whose voices are those ? That crying one 
 is Ruth's, isn't it ?" he asked. 
 
 ^' Yes, it 's Ruth and William PontPorthlywd, 
 (thus every dweller in rustic Wales takes a sur- 
 name from his hamlet or his domicile,) Willy 
 and Ruth hand in hand." 
 
 There was a squalid neglect of person, with 
 
 wildness of look in Marmaduke, even before 
 
 the boy thus spoke, that caught the alarmed 
 
 notice of Ruth, as contrasted with even his 
 l5
 
 226 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 state before her divulging the secret — the only 
 state she had yet seen him under, for his subse- 
 quent great change to placidity Ruth knew 
 only by report of her friend Kitty ; they^ it 
 will be remembered^ never having met in their 
 new relative condition. 
 
 " Damnation ! what d^ ye mean, boy ? That 
 low lover-talk ! Hand in hand }" he said in a 
 voice of thunder, springing forward, directed 
 by the young man's voice saying " Uncle'' — 
 and with his hand in one moment at his throat 
 — " Scoundrel, I'll make ye remember — if ye 
 forget, and think — if because I'm a poor blind 
 
 wretch But you shall know I've boarded 
 
 battle-ships sword in hand, and been boarded 
 — ^blood ! I '11 have your heart's blood \" 
 
 " Let go, uncle ! what ails you ? IVe no 
 heart to quarrel." 
 
 "Oh, my dear, dear Marm " "It's 
 
 your daughter, sir '' '' It 's your daughter 
 
 and her sweetheart, sir !" cried William and 
 Ruth and the terrified boy, all together, and 
 almost in the same instant. 
 
 Marmaduke loosing his grasp, and his mad 
 face settling down into a black melancholy so 
 calm that it could smile, said, ^'Thanks for 
 that word, my good little boy — 'pon my soul, 
 nephew Will, I 'm sorry — oh Ruth I — But I
 
 FIRST DAY. ^ 227 
 
 Wasn't jealous— jealous ! You daren't say that. 
 I was taken by surprise. Oh, Ruth ! What in 
 the devil's name do ye here together? Oh^ 
 Ruth ! ' ' The interjected^ groaning, call on Ruth 
 came dismal as the measured toll of a passing- 
 bell. 
 
 Ruth was nearly fainting ; the young man 
 upheld her, and that action roused her, for 
 she instantly advanced to lean upon the dis- 
 tracted man, who, softly, with a rueful look 
 (for look it seemed, so tenderly earnest was the 
 rolling of those dim eyes on her face,) fixed on 
 her, softly resigned her again to the support 
 of William. 
 
 ^' You frighten us, dear uncle ! what 's in 
 your head ? what 's bursting in your breast ? 
 Good God, how he pants ! Sit down on the 
 ground, my good uncle." 
 
 ^' Hell ! hell ! not its fire, I hope ! " said Mar- 
 maduke, wildly striking that head and that 
 breast. " I must be left by myself to recover 
 myself. For God's sake ! take her to the par- 
 sonage, both of ye. Boy, go along with 'em. 
 Say I implore Mr. Llewellyn to take tender 
 care of her." 
 
 Ere one of them could answer, he disap- 
 peared in the direction of the loneliest woods 
 of the peninsula, with which he was well ac-
 
 228 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 quainted. His tone and looks were of that 
 stern determination that foretold fury if thwarted 
 by one word^ and they all stood looking wist- 
 fully after him^ but not daring to follow. 
 
 '^Oh^ we had the nicest journey," the youth 
 said on their way homeward, ^' going, he was 
 happy ! Bought me all sorts of things at Con- 
 wy, and we told stories to beguile the way ; 
 but when he'd been to that horrid old woman's 
 — all was over. Oh, how pale he did look when 
 he came out of her underground house to what 
 he was when he went in; for I waited outside. 
 All the way home he 's hardly said a word. 
 Once he was in a passion with me for just no- 
 thing, then he begged pardon of me — of me ! 
 And then he gave me all the rest of the cakes 
 and everything he'd bough t_, all at once, to make 
 it up. Only two or three words, he did nothing 
 but mutter to himself, ' God is just, and mer- 
 ciless,' and sometimes, 'The hand of God is 
 in this ; I 'm justly punished !' " 
 
 And here, to explain this sad change, we 
 must revert to what passed in the mountain- 
 moor-del-hut, taking up the narrative broken 
 off at the words of the superannuated woman : — 
 
 " Alice Woolstoncraft never bore babe, man- 
 child, or womanchild, never ! " 
 
 After the mournful pause already mentioned.
 
 FIRST DAY. 229 
 
 poor PaulPs long farewell to the father-feelings 
 he quickly revived, and with a trembling of 
 anxious curiosity said, 
 
 ^^ And now, as you see I know every thing 
 else — ^how you brought a child across the Bay, 
 a new-born one, for that poor creature, to pass 
 off on me, for her's and my child — "' 
 
 " Youths did ye say? Then 'you^re the 
 husband come back ? '' She interrupted him, 
 but with torpid indifference. " I did hear some 
 talk of his being come home, or dream it, me- 
 thinks — and you 're he, are you ? Yes, we 
 meant to cheat you — but you came too late — 
 well, well ! it ^s all one now/^ 
 
 " And now, dear good woman, tell me who 
 were the parents who could part with that 
 beautiful poor naked thing, and let you bear it 
 oiF in a boat over waves and — who was her mo- 
 ther? who was the father?" 
 
 The woman seemed, or was, of great age; but 
 long hving alone, and that loathsome sort of 
 despair that froward minds, when worldly hope 
 is quite gone, sink into, and long habit of hating 
 mankind for having imputed to her crimes be- 
 yond what she had ever contemplated — all 
 these tended to shut her up, as it were, with 
 her evil and wretched self, thus to give added 
 appearance of a near departure from a world
 
 230 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 she loathed^ and its creatures that she shunned 
 and was shunned by. 
 
 But his last question seemed hke the spear of 
 Ithuriel to conjure up the whole fierce woman, 
 beneath this living shell or coffin, as such a 
 ruinous carcase might be almost called, and to 
 his question, ^^ who was the father? " — ^'^ I M 
 bless God yet before I die, if man or devil, 
 black art or black dog, would tell me that! 
 Yet, God take me,'' she added with dropt voice, 
 looking at her two arm-bones loosely lapped in 
 sallow shrivelled skin (for such the two arms 
 she held up appeared) now trembling with pas- 
 sion, and curving the long-nailed fingers, with 
 the action of a hawk's foot just clutching a prey, 
 as expressing their readiness to tear out the 
 eyes of the object of her long deliberate rage of 
 revenge, burning yet under ashes, — " God take 
 me ! helpless wretch that I am, what could / 
 do, if I was told ? '^ 
 
 '^ But you knew the mother ? '* 
 
 ^^ Aye, I ought to know — my own only child, 
 I ought to know ! And a good girl, and good 
 to me till — " 
 
 " Your own, was it your daughter? — My 
 God ! are you my Ruth's grandmother then ? 
 — and shall we never know who — " 
 
 « What could / do if I was told ? '' her hoi-
 
 FIRST DAY. ^31 
 
 low now horrid voice kept reiterating to her- 
 self, her hands now clenched into two trem- 
 bUng impotent fists^ and her toothless gums 
 working like the jaws of ruminating beasts^, 
 only more rapidly — with the action_, as impo- 
 tent of purpose — of a raging gnashing of teeth. 
 
 '^^ But the mother — your daughter — does she 
 live?'' 
 
 " No^ no! — she's in her dry bones^ poor 
 creature, and I here in the flesh — such flesh as 
 this is — against right course of nature/' and she 
 grasped up the whole remaining muscles of her 
 left arm between her thumb and finger — ^^ She 
 did not desire to live — and I, I was cruel to her 
 — that 's the curse on me ! " 
 
 ^' What was your daughter's name ? — where 
 lived she?" 
 
 '' Elizabeth." 
 
 " Ha ! " Something struck the mind of 
 her now trembling interrogator, which al- 
 lowed but this interjection and instantly plunged 
 him into dumb deepest reverie. His heart 
 began to palpitate most violently, a dizzy whirl- 
 ing of a moment seized his brain, his very 
 knees knocked together; some fatal past, known 
 only to himself, was presented, like a phantasma 
 which some evil worker, or that human ruin 
 herself, as a demoniac sorceress, conjured up to
 
 ^32 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 stand like his own black death-scaffold before 
 his mind^s eye. Conscience took the alarm, and 
 all was dismal as death and the judgment itself 
 shadowing his soul could make it^ in that pause. 
 Suddenly he burst forth " Elizabeth Foulke ! 
 Your name's Foulke ? Betsy Foulke. I thank 
 God ! '' But she was muttering in her stu- 
 pidity of exhaustion after such a rage^ long 
 unawakened^ though never dead, and noticed 
 not his words, 
 
 " Yet who could not be cruel ? She, my only 
 help, came home crying, blushing, hiding her 
 head, poor creature ! and instead of helping me, 
 must have help — I was old, old then ! If that 
 had been all ! But she came to shame me — to 
 bear a bastard to call me Granny, to be dragged 
 up through years of our poor helpless selves 
 only, and never a fatlier to 't. For never would 
 the poor ruined creature tell me who was its 
 father, and she never told ! 'Twas enough to 
 make me cruel, make me mad, was'nt it? The 
 soft creature that did never know will but mine 
 before, to refuse to tell, when it was what would 
 have taken the charge off me, and got the little 
 torment a man's protection ? But she was al- 
 ways shamefaced, dear child I and it 's my belief 
 it was some married man was the dog — all the 
 plagues of hell follow him ! But she said it
 
 FIRST DAY. 233 
 
 were no good to tell, for he would never be 
 seen more — she should never see him more ! 
 and then she fell into 'sterics. ^ Curse him ! ' 
 said I, '^ who brought this upon two lone wo- 
 men !' and IM have had her said Amen ! but 
 ^ I won't, mother, if I die ! ' said she. ^ Out 
 with ye then into the snow, with that harlot 
 shape, and lye-in there/ God pardon me ! I Ve 
 said, and she M sit crying outside our threshold 
 — ^ Will ye tell, to come in ? Will ye curse 
 him, to come in, out of the sleet and snow ? ' 
 — ^ I can't mother ! and the sooner it freezes 
 me to the heart the better ! — only for my poor 
 unborn thing's sake, let me in, mother!^ So 
 we went on 1 So we went on ! ^^ 
 
 " Wretch ! did you leave her to perish in the 
 snow ? ^^ 
 
 " Wretch in your own teeth ! '^ retorted the 
 wretched woman, her dormant nature now 
 roused — ^^ did I say such a thing ? I lay on 
 our earth floor that she might lie on the one 
 bedstick I had, and all I could get her I got : 
 but I had planned what to do with the brat ere 
 it came. For many a time did your poor wife 
 (if you be the man) come to consult me, the 
 ^ cunning woman' as they called me, about 
 her misfortune, as she called it — in not having 
 family like other wives, and asking about
 
 234 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 'charms^ and the like lies and vanities, to 
 make an alteration, and she was for ever fan- 
 cying herself in the way to be happy, and she'd 
 cry and say she knew her husband would soon 
 cease loving her unless — '^ 
 
 ^^ Margery Foulke is your certain name, is ^nt 
 it ? ^' asked PauU again, inattentive to her 
 words. 
 
 " Aye, aye, poor old Madge Foulke^s my 
 name. So she 'd cry, and when the man was 
 off, how she did take on, because he *d come 
 and find no hope of a little one ! — Now when 
 my poor child was in that way, to her sorrow 
 and mine — I bethought me what it was to be 
 rich, and what a pity it was 'nt that foolish wife 
 that was pregnant, in place of my one poor 
 lamb of my bosom. And it was / did put the 
 thing in her head, and /did scheme every thing, 
 and 1^11 say so to the man her husband if he 
 were ever to come back at last. I ^m afeard of 
 nothing alive and nothing dead ! And did 
 somebody say he did come back ? Did I dream 
 you are the very man, I see so dim through a 
 fog there of my old eyes, blind of smoke, and 
 tears too in their time ? To be sure ! who else 
 was I talking to ? " 
 
 "Where died she, this unhappy Elizabeth 
 Foulke ? ^' Paull now asked, who had not ceased
 
 FIRST DAY. 235 
 
 to tremble during this burst of her long-pent 
 burthens of memory. 
 
 "Betsy Oliver! that was^ername — 'Betsy 
 the Beauty ! ' God help our prides^ poor 
 idiots ! proud I was once of that name — proud 
 of her that was to be my shame. I 've had two 
 husbands^ man^ but never a babe of my body 
 but her, and some villain unknown made me 
 curse myself that I had not been barren, as that 
 woman. '^ 
 
 "No more!" Paull cried out in a voice of 
 desperation, "I won^t hear any more ! — Ruth 
 is my daughter ! Heaven ! Heaven ! why have 
 you avenged the wrong of the mother, through 
 such an instrument ? Why none but my own 
 child?" 
 
 The old woman's torpor of all perceptive 
 faculties, had the same effect as deafness, so 
 she went on regardless. 
 
 " And never was that unknown rascal that my 
 poor child loved so, the man to help us, to 
 once send to her, to once see her more, when 
 she was dying, worn to a skeleton, of a decline 
 as they called it at Beaumaris. Never did he 
 so much as " 
 
 '^1 couldn't! \ couldn't! ye unjust dotard," 
 he broke forth, " I was pressed, forced away
 
 236 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 — was'nt I? I didn't even know — God's my 
 witness ! — that the poor girl was in such situa- 
 tion — I confess I wished it — I wished for a fe- 
 male child. Bitterly I 'm cursed in that wish ! 
 Oh, I could yet have been blessed in it, yet have 
 loved as a father, before this cursed sensual 
 dream of these last few days — now, never 
 more ! " 
 
 Each was too self-engrossed now to much 
 regard the other. The childless woman only 
 looked at him bewildered, when she caught the 
 sound of his lapse of speech into the first 
 person ; but the idea was too confusing, of his 
 being also the seducer of her child, for her 
 feeble mind to catch it distinctly: but as if some 
 vague reflection of such idea struck her, — she 
 again bent her grisly skeleton hand into that 
 bird-like attitude, and said, "Aye, it was my 
 pride to hear ^ the Beauty' and ^ the Beauty' 
 
 and to look on it ! Oh, may the eyes 
 
 never, never see heaven that looked on that 
 beauty, to lust after it, and to hunt after it, 
 and hunt it even to death ! Would to God 
 they were in the reach of these five claws^ even 
 these ! " 
 
 '' God has revenged you better with the fire 
 of his heaven ! — they are already gone ! " Mar-
 
 FIRST DAY. 237 
 
 maduke groaned^ his blasted balls rolling and 
 working fearfully in his head, within reach of 
 her impotent and shaking hands. 
 
 Careless to deny or reveal himself, Paull 
 shook down what money he had about him, 
 and feebly saying — " You shall not want — help 
 shall be sent to you ! " rapidly groped his way to 
 the outside, and reappeared to the astonished 
 boy, coming forth as changed, to as deadly a 
 degree and manner, as pallid, silent, and dis- 
 mal of whole aspect as those re-emerging from 
 the cave of Trophonius, according to Grecian 
 traditionary lore. 
 
 The voice of that woman had been indeed to 
 him an oracle ominous of death. The past few 
 days, which had brought a sort of new birth, 
 along with Ruth's novel confession, had ren- 
 dered it, now at least, impossible for his ardent 
 yet delicate nature to resume \h.Q father , with 
 common peace of mind. His mind was, by 
 this new light cast on his innocent daughter's 
 actions, made anxious about the real nature 
 (however concealed from herself) of her strong 
 attachment to him, while thus, in secret, so long 
 fully convinced he was no relation to her. 
 Could he have entered her pure virgin mind 
 and heart, he would have had small ground of 
 that shuddering feeling for her, which now pos
 
 238 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 sessed him : but men can hardly conceive the 
 degree to which tenderest ardours and white- 
 thoughted innocence can be blended, in female 
 hearts and minds wholly untampered with by 
 temptation.
 
 FIRST DAY. 239 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 How glare his eyes, and yet he's not awake : 
 And as he grinds his teeth, what noise they make ! 
 See what cold drops upon his forehead stand, 
 And how he clenches that broad bony hand ! 
 
 Crabbe. 
 
 William had no sooner placed Ruth in 
 charge of the good vicar^ (the hour of the 
 expected ambush laid for her not being yet 
 come,) than he set forth in friendly anxiety to 
 watch the steps of Paull. He came at last to 
 what is called the " Marsh of the Monks," 
 near to which was a small melancholy boggy 
 pool, over which weeds were spread, and some 
 reeds and rushes whistled shrill, and the bulg- 
 ing of the ground all about, clothed with a sear 
 and withered sod, marked the now pure, and 
 green, though sad-coloured, no longer pathetic 
 tombs, of many dead. 
 
 The absence of stones and sculptures — of all 
 memorial but what Nature seemed to have long 
 reclaimed as her own, — a mound and a sod for 
 flocks to graze over, removes these graves almost
 
 240 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 out of the jurisdiction of The Grave, to the 
 imagination. The little black earth which was 
 so long ago Man — and the calcined relics of the 
 clay and heaped fuel with which that human 
 antiquity was, so long ago, consumed — though 
 discoverable on ransacking this purified sort of 
 sepulchre, are rarely present to the fancy ; and 
 were they even to the eye, the marks of fire, 
 the all-purifying element give a delicate cha 
 racter to decay, and festering mortality is no 
 more detected noisome to thought below, than 
 is human mourning to be found dismal to the 
 sense above. For those whose last sigh was 
 breathed before the first Ceesar's first breath 
 was drawn — whose sleep in the semi-immor- 
 tality of ashes had been long and sound, when 
 the Roman hosts first trampled their daisied 
 bed, — for those "auncient men," smiling up 
 grim scorn of Roman, Saxon, Dane, with all 
 their insolence and might, and murders — for 
 those, their fellow men of to-day forget to 
 mourn even as mortals. Death and Time to- 
 gether have wrought a sort of apotheosis, of 
 which the carnedd and the wild and lone green 
 tumulus, seem but symbols, or shrines of Na- 
 ture's workmanship, rather than men^s hands. 
 And in one of the russet hollows of these 
 solemn risings of the earth, lay sleeping close
 
 FIRST DAY. 241 
 
 by the small rushy pool^ the exhausted form of 
 Marmaduke PaulL As the young man watched 
 his sleep a minute, he perceived that sleep, like 
 man, is but a half-friend, if not an enemy to 
 the wretched. His frequent twitching of face 
 and limbs, and his agitations even while fast 
 asleep, proved the passions still preying on 
 him even in the darkness of the shut-up senses, 
 like living persons close imprisoned in the house 
 of the plague, yet still heard dreadfully moving 
 and mourning among the spotted dead within, 
 or even heard hollowly to curse or pray, though 
 all outwardly appears as a house shut, ruinous, 
 uninhabited. 
 
 Before William could recover from the sur- 
 prise of seeing him thus unexpectedly, PauU 
 started to his feet, not from being awakened, 
 but in some frightful dream ; for his words were 
 part of one, though his eyelids were uplifted, 
 and his eyes stared seemingly awake. But he 
 quickly discovered the presence of some one ; 
 William then accosted him, and he exclaimed 
 wildly 
 
 " How long have you been watching me 
 asleep ? Dreams are Nature^s, not ours. How 
 dare you. Sir, pry into my brain and breast, 
 
 when exhausted Nature what have I been 
 
 saying ? Where 's she ? Have patience, boy ! '^ 
 
 VOL. I. M
 
 242 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 His nephew having soothed him as well as 
 he could, Ruth became the subject of their 
 speech. Paull seemed resolved to drop in 
 eternal oblivion his last discovery, and let the 
 fact stand simply that he was the real father, 
 without the now fruitless avowal (at least to 
 William) of the fate of the mother. 
 
 *^^ No, uncle," the youth said, in answer to 
 his promise of Ruth's hand without further 
 delay — " no 1 that 's all over. She does not, 
 cannot love me, and IVe come to better 
 thoughts than to take her without a heart. 
 But the puzzle to sister and me is, who has her 
 heart ? — for sure as I am no more than a friend 
 or brother to her, there's somebody, some- 
 where, is more." 
 
 Marmaduke groaned, " How know you or 
 your sister that ? " he inquired. 
 
 " Oh, I don't mean that she has confessed 
 it, nor that she is like a wanton girl, dreaming 
 about a sweetheart; but there's sure to be some- 
 body that has got possession of her whole 
 thoughts and whole feelings, and every wish of 
 her soul, uncle, you may depend on it. God 
 knows, it may be as innocently as a young 
 motner lives in her first little one, that she 
 purses and watches all day, and then does the 
 same all nignt in her dreams ; but still I love
 
 / FIRST DAY. 243 
 
 her too well to marry her in that state ; for, as 
 sister Sophy says, how could 1 bear to see it, 
 after bringing her home ? " 
 
 " The more reason, boy ; the more reason 
 for your being married quickly," Marmaduke 
 murmured. " I bless God for this proof of your 
 having a real love for my poor, poor — '* 
 
 As William waited an explanation of these 
 words, a cry of distress grew upon the breeze, 
 with a rapidity that proved the person in terror 
 to be running swiftly, and Ruth the next mo- 
 ment came flying, pursued in that lonely part, 
 whither she had come in her anxiety to find 
 her fathcB^ by David Shakerley and another, 
 who had anticipated, as has been hinted, the 
 hour appointed. 
 
 " Oh, save me, William, save me V' she 
 cried out ; then seeing her father, " oh, thank 
 God ! save me, Marmaduke ! you here ! oh, no; 
 you're bhnd ; let 'em take me ; don't strive 
 with them, Marmaduke ! " 
 
 *•' The devil ! you here?" the ruffian exclaimed, 
 seeing William, whom he believed to be on the 
 other side of the bay. 
 
 The distracted girl, meanwhile, had thrown 
 herself on her father's neck, and William, 
 planting himself direct in the path of the pur- 
 suer, said, ^^Stop, I command you, David 
 m2
 
 -44 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 Shakerley ! I'll pay your trouble ; back ! all 's 
 well.'^ 
 
 The harsh-featured^ sturdy fellow^ bent his 
 brows on the youth of much slighter make^ 
 while he stood recovering his breath a moment, 
 armed with a bludgeon, and drest in his best 
 sailor clothes, but ready to convert his parley 
 into a rush upon his repentant accomplice. 
 With his comrade to aid, he was, however, so 
 sure of mastery over a rather delicate youth 
 and a blind man, that he seemed willing to 
 pause, and only fixed a grim smile upon the 
 shamed and now trembling young man — trem- 
 bling for her and perhaps his endangered uncle. 
 
 Ere Ruth could recover breath to explain 
 that she had been seized by one of them, but 
 extricated herself, with loss of part of her dress, 
 to which her torn clothes and flying hair fallen 
 bore witness, she fainted away; and in that 
 moment Shakerley sprung forward to seize her, 
 as the father was in the act of laying her along 
 the sod, a posture effectual in relieving fainting. 
 To him all was obscure, of course, except that 
 his child was in danger of violence, and h^d 
 flown to his bosom. 
 
 William, now driven to the last desperate 
 means of averting the peril he had brought on 
 one he loved, once more threw himself between
 
 FIRST DAY. 245 
 
 the ruffian and his prey, pulling forth one of 
 his pistols, and pointing it at his breast. The 
 fellow, however, aimed a rapid blow at his arm, 
 which, descending full on his hand, hurled the 
 weapon to the ground, which exploded harm- 
 lessly with the stroke. The distressed father, 
 meanwhile, could only hold his child firmly, 
 half reclining on a hillock, half in his arms, 
 groaning agony over his own helplessness ; but 
 William, now stopping the villain, but still 
 dragged along by the hold he kept of his collar, 
 and hugging him to obstruct the use of his 
 bludgeon, contrived to pull out with his dis- 
 engaged hand the last pistol, at sight of which, 
 the other, but a lad, though sturdy, recoiled 
 from dragging at William by his coat skirt, and 
 retreated till he saw the issue of this reinforce- 
 ment of fire-arms. 
 
 The report of the first pistol had roused the 
 fainting girl, and she now stood tottering to 
 watch with frantic eye and dreadful screams, 
 a deadly struggle for a loaded and ready-cocked 
 weapon, between the two young men unequally 
 matched. 
 
 " Do they fight ? Is WiUiam down ? Ter- 
 rible curse of God, that I can't see where to 
 help ! but I won't leave you ,-'^ were the broken 
 exclamations of the father.
 
 246 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 " Help ! or she 's lost and I *m a dead man ! 
 he 's got my pistol ! help ! help ! or she ^s lost !" 
 now cried the unfortunate victim of his own 
 rushing upon a wild justice, as now, only able 
 to clog a little longer the stronger arm of his 
 opponent by clinging about him, and the other 
 ruffian now returning to the charge, he rolled 
 his eye, as he could catch a moment, piteously 
 toward the pair, impotent as childhood to his 
 rescue. Yet, not so ; for the weaker of the 
 two, strong in the tenderness of her heart as 
 much as desperation, sprung forward and com- 
 menced such an eager though ill-directed aid of 
 the overpowered youth, whom she expected 
 every moment to see shot through the heart or 
 brain, as little accorded with her figure and 
 palsied quietness of the minutes previous. But 
 PauU now missing his charge, and thus relieved 
 from his post, was among them, bhnd as he 
 was, almost in the same moment; and with 
 that wonderful tact in the blind which converts 
 touch, and perhaps hearing, almost into a sort 
 of substituted sight, darting his strong hand 
 first to the mouth of the ruffian, directed by a 
 blasphemous oath thence bellowed at the mo- 
 ment, ran it along and down his arm to his 
 armed hand like lightning, and crying out, 
 " Ruth, Ruth, go behind me ! both go ! '' in
 
 FIRST DAY. 247 
 
 dread of the pistol going off, a hand of each 
 now grasping the tube^ and straining to turn it 
 back toward the other's breast, (for the fury of 
 the wretch was now roused to the bloodiest 
 pitch to be baffled by a bhnd man,) strength, 
 or strength of rage under wrong, prevailed, and 
 the master-hand of PauU constrained the hand 
 even yet possessing the weapon to discharge it 
 toward its holder, whom it wounded in the 
 knee. 
 
 William, who had employed the minute or 
 two of this conflict in withholding Ruth, by 
 main force only, from helping her father, now 
 the worst danger was over flew to his aid. 
 
 "Let me alone with him, lad," said Paul], 
 who did not know of the shot having taken 
 eflfect ; and grasping the growling wretch, too 
 sturdy to submit, by the throat, he now, thus 
 having gained fair hold of his object, mastered 
 him with the power of manhood over infancy, 
 and shaking him violently the whole way, 
 dragged him to the brink of another deeper bog, 
 with which his frequent soundings with his 
 staff had made him well acquainted. Here, such 
 was the strength that aroused feelings rather 
 than muscular vigour gave, he actually inverted 
 his now silenced foe in a minute, and dipped 
 him, thus suspended by the legs, over and
 
 24g THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 over in the pitch-like semi-fluid^ which wel- 
 tered^ exposed by previous removal of some 
 two feet of the face of the ground^ more firm 
 by plant-roots and fibres of herbage. 
 
 Shakerley, now roaring for mercy each time 
 he re-emerged, which the fierce misery, joined 
 to fury of the other, seemed indisposed to 
 grant, at last stooped to appeal to Ruth, who, 
 true to her sex's placable openness to such ap- 
 peals, supplicated for him. PaulPs mercy, 
 however, extended only to tossing him like a 
 carcase into the midst of the liquid bog, whence 
 his wounded knee, bleeding within the mire, 
 hardly allowed his floundering so far back as to 
 be about knee deep. There, his accomplice 
 having decamped, he was compelled again to 
 make his intended victim his intercessor, by 
 disclosing to her the state of his knee. 
 
 William extended a hand to drag him forth. 
 " Into the sea with him ! ^^ was Paull's only 
 pity, Bu.t the gentle girl in the same moment 
 was seen rending quite off" a hanging large por- 
 tion of her gown, which these ruffians had torn, 
 to bandage the wound of even the more fero- 
 cious of them. 
 
 Marmaduke turned to her in the act of ap- 
 plying it to the bleeding limb, with her own 
 yet trembling hands, with a face of tender ad-
 
 FIRST DAY. 249 
 
 miration ; though for himself, his heart could 
 have allowed his hand to tear up the wound, 
 he did not the less feel the moral beauty of the 
 act. The saddest effect of misery is perhaps 
 the fierceness it creates in the gentle, the 
 pitiless character it imparts to the once piteous, 
 bosom. 
 
 The escaped man was probably gone to ap- 
 prise his fellows lurking under Llanduddno 
 rocks, and to heave off their boat for escape. 
 The maimed one was left, secure in his lame- 
 ness, till proper measures should be taken for 
 disposing of him. 
 
 After recovering breath, the three friends 
 took the way to the parsonage. None there 
 knew of the fact of RuthN having been waylaid, 
 so rare were any wayfarers in that lone promon- 
 tory ; and it was with shame and much trouble 
 that the rash cause of this outrage explained 
 the whole to Mr. Llewellyn. 
 
 But Marmaduke had yet stranger disclosures 
 to make to the clergyman, which, howevci, 
 with a sort of sunkenness of spirit and heart, 
 as well as voice, he confined to briefly assuring 
 him that Ruth was his own undoubted daughter, 
 that the contrary opinion was a mistake, and, 
 moreover, he left it to his paternal kindness to 
 impress that certain fact on the mind of his 
 m5
 
 250 THE MOUNTAIN- DECAMERON'. 
 
 long mistaken child. He himself, he said, wats- 
 utterly unequal to the task of explaining this ta 
 her. But there was another more arduous 
 part to be performed. That was, to reconcile 
 her to a speedy marriage with her cousin — once 
 more her real cousin. 
 
 "I know it — I am well convinced that he loves 
 her — that makes me most anxious to see her 
 under his roof — what protector has she else ? " 
 said PauU. 
 
 " My dear neighbour, has she not you, her 
 father ? " 
 
 He but shrugged his shoulders and smiled 
 dismally, and was silent. 
 
 PauU was now more earnest than ever had 
 been William himself^ for the completion of the 
 promised rite. 
 
 An hour or two's sleep was necessary to the 
 exhausted spirits of Ruth. PauU, on her retiring 
 to a chamber in the lowly parsonage for that 
 purpose, called her back, kissed her, gave her 
 his blessing in a solemn, new, mysterious 
 manner, yet so mixed with soothings as to 
 avoid terrifying or disturbing her mind, not yet 
 become calm — and withheld the mighty secret 
 which was burthening his own breast. 
 
 '^ Won't you go and rest too?'' she said 
 anxiously — '^ Pray do — are you not hurt? you
 
 FIRST DAY. 25 1 
 
 look dreadful pale ! — Do go ! I shall go to 
 sleep so comfortably^ if I know you are gone 
 too — Pm sure you need it — Will you ? '* 
 
 "I go, my girl," he said; but somewhat 
 of hollow horror was in the tone. Three 
 times he called her back after their parting on 
 the antique staircase, dusky with leaves outside. 
 " The last time,'' he said — " And as if this were 
 our very last meeting on this side of eternity, 
 believe me, my child, what can I call you 
 tenderer, dearer ? oh ! believe, that no husband 
 will love, no father ever loved, as tenderly, as 
 intensely as I have loved and love you, my all! 
 Blood to a heart's life is not more necessary 
 than you are to my life ! — soul never shrunk 
 from quitting mortal body as does this trem- 
 bling hand at quitting this dear hand's hold ! 
 Imagine, only imagine this the last time, 
 mine must hold your's — your's mine ! Go, 
 sleep, my precious ! and don't let any solemn 
 strangeness in this farewell keep you waking. 
 The good and kind man of this house, will 
 explain something to you, my life ! hereafter, 
 and promise me that what through him I en- 
 join you to do, I mean conjure, implore as if 
 my last prayer '' 
 
 ^^ Command, say, dearest Marmaduke," she
 
 252 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 said sobbing, but only sad from the sadness of 
 his manner. 
 
 ^' Well, then, sweet ! say, dying command — 
 you will obey it ? '" 
 
 '^Or die!" she said vehemently. "Alas! 
 how mournfully you speak, yet try to hide it ! 
 But when I wake, you'll talk and think cheer- 
 fully again, won^t you ? since there 's nothing 
 the matter — so let us thank God for our escape.^^ 
 
 "Amen ! " Marmaduke responded. 
 
 " Oh, there's no further danger, now ; don't 
 be low spirited about those wicked men," she 
 rejoined, his secret allusion to some more awful 
 danger, and moral escape, misunderstood, and 
 thus they parted. Paull stopped at the stair 
 foot to see once more the glimpsing of her 
 form, as passing a window that illumined that 
 part of the staircase else quite dark; then 
 sought Mr. Llewellyn. 
 
 It seemed that Paull dreaded the tumultuous 
 tenderness of such a terrible parting as could 
 alone be between him and her, if to be an 
 eternal one. 
 
 A long and affecting dialogue occurred be- 
 tween the pastor and Paull, during the sleep of 
 Ruth, to part of which William became an 
 auditor, and shed many tears of shame and
 
 FIRST DAY. 253 
 
 contrition under the gentle though searching 
 strictures of the clergyman on his conduct. 
 Paull spoke of a journey he proposed to take, 
 and committed to his nephew as husband^ 
 and to that benignant man as second father, in 
 his absence, the bodily and mental protection 
 of the sole being that attached him to life. 
 But his reiterated question ^^ Is she awake 
 yet?" put to the daughter Kate, seemed to 
 prove the infirmity of his lately formed purpose 
 of setting off during that sleep on his melan- 
 choly journey. Yet ere she awoke he departed.
 
 254 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 I watch the sea, I walk the land, 
 
 lu all the world, I am alone ! — 
 Silent I pace the sea- worn strand, 
 
 I listen heartless to the tone 
 Of winds and waters All in vain ! 
 
 Creation dies without a groan — 
 And I without a hope remain ! 
 
 Crabbe — ^^ World ofDreama.'''' 
 
 It was already twilight when a shepherd of 
 the promontory came running in, without 
 stopping to knocks and sought the vicar 
 through private rooms, in his eagerness to tell 
 that he had seen PauU the blind man stealing 
 under the high rocks of Llandudno^ there rising 
 like a waU to the height of the highest cathe- 
 dral, the seaward buttresses of the dreadful 
 Orme's Head, although it was a spring tide, 
 the sea running in, and the passage obliterated 
 at high tide, and always without an exit_, ex- 
 cept into those deep watery caves, worn by the 
 action of the sea. 
 
 He had shouted to him^ he said^ but he
 
 FIRST DAY. 255 
 
 seemed wishful to hide himself, and did hide 
 instantly in one of the caverns. At the pace 
 he walked, it would be hard for him to return, 
 should he proceed much further ; and he would 
 not return at his call, but, emerging after a 
 space, crept along as before, over the great 
 stones, avoiding the fine sandy footing lower 
 down, as more exposed to view. Such are the 
 powerful under-currents and eddies off that 
 dangerous coast, that the body of one drowned 
 would, probably, be borne out to sea far and 
 long, to receive a remote sepulture from stran- 
 ger-hands, if any besides that gulph of sea 
 itself. It was true, that Marmaduke did often 
 chuse to pursue that blind, dreadful avenue- 
 between mural precipices and a stormy ocean, 
 but he had always prudently timed his visit. 
 
 No time was to be lost — strange doubts of 
 his design whitened the cheek of the religious 
 man, who had become deeply interested in the 
 fates of the father and daughter — but he 
 imposed silence on his household, to avoid 
 terrifying the poor wearied and still sleeping 
 girl: but except Kitty, who stayed in doors, all 
 were quickly at the near end or aperture of the 
 avenue. No storm threatened, but a great 
 swell of the sea, and its advance with all the 
 force of a spring-tide, aided by some wind blow-
 
 256 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 ing on shore, had in itself all the terrors if not 
 the uproar of a storm, and the deadlines s of a 
 hundred storms, on such a shore. Woe to 
 whatever, existing by breath, should be caught 
 in that lessening prison, walled beyond the 
 cunning of any architect or tyrant that ever 
 contrived a dungeon or a tower ! The vicar 
 would not be restrained from advancing a long 
 way into that impassable gorge of cliff and 
 ocean, now flinging its long breadth of froth, 
 nearer and nearer, high in air, like a mighty 
 beast, secure in his mightiness, — advancing in 
 measured pace, tossing his wratVs foam. The 
 rest, William, the shepherd, and one other 
 person, followed him to the furthest extent 
 possible with safety; all then joined in one 
 long shout to the unseen adventurous man, 
 but the sea was too loud, with its fresh breeze 
 and its furiously running tide, to allow hope of 
 their being heard. Nothing answered but 
 rock birds, corvorants, and puflins, that came 
 flying out overhead with their shrill clangour 
 of many notes ; yet did that long, hopeless 
 shout of the human — and that following wild 
 discord of the sea-birds' voices, seem less 
 dismal than the succeeding and last — the 
 superhuman, solitary, immense voice of the 
 deep, when considered as the trump of its
 
 FISRT DAY. 257 
 
 invading march — the dead march of the tower- 
 ing waves closing in on a single human being, 
 certainly somewhere in the jaws of that de- 
 struction ! The silence, and that solemn sound 
 dreadful as the silence, and the lengthened 
 desolate perspective, dwindling to what seemed 
 a mere ledge already, of the rock-strewn beach^ 
 lost in the tossing and leaping white of surf, 
 this dire perspective, that low thunder of sound^ 
 that death-silence of the pause, all struck 
 funereal horror on every sense of every one of 
 the party now stopping baffled, thus unan- 
 swered except by wild creatures and wild 
 waves — compelled to turn, and hurry for their 
 own lives, yet certain that a devoted life must 
 there be left behind. 
 
 " Shepherd," Mr. Llewellyn cried out, 
 "have'nt you gathered samphire formerly on 
 Priestholme Island ? Could not you, as you're 
 expert in such things, get more help, and try 
 your old art, to suspend yourself so as to reach 
 the bottom of the cliffs far on, and so pull up 
 this unhappy man ? ^' 
 
 " Ah, sir," said the samphire-gatherer, '' our 
 ropes but reach to the nests or the samphire, 
 you know, not down to the beach, not down 
 such piles of rock as these ! — and, well-a-day ! 
 how should we get up a strong man the like of
 
 258 THE MOUNTAIN -DECAMERON. 
 
 blind Paull, when he *s set his heart on dying ? 
 Who shall get him up against his will? '' 
 
 " We must not judge him, shepherd ; we 
 don't know that he has such dread design ! He 
 may mistake the time of tide, — he may " — 
 
 ^^ Nay, nay master, sure as ye 're a living 
 man here, Paull is gone yonder to die, I'm 
 sure from his ways when he caught my voice — 
 and if the sea has'nt carried him leagues out 
 by morning, you mind, that beach will show ! 
 One of those huge holes where the sea crea- 
 tures hide under the rock, you'll see, shall be 
 all the death-bed and chamber Marmaduke 
 Paull will ever find/' 
 
 Though time would have permitted a little 
 further advance, as they found on returning, all 
 hopes were now directed to the heights above, 
 small as was the chance of such a descent 
 proving practicable. Much time had been 
 already lost, in this confusion, when a fresh 
 alarm of a new nature quite astounded them. 
 They had quitted the beach some time, and some 
 were running here and there for ropes, and 
 having thus alarmed others, were joined by 
 them, while some had proceeded far on to such 
 known parts of the terrific Orme's Head top, 
 or its rocky ridges stretching up the coast, as 
 might admit a hope of one scrambling down —
 
 FIRST DAY. 259 
 
 when a woman came barefoot rapidly on the 
 green down, bringing some clothes in her hand. 
 
 " Who's here that knows Ruth Paull's gown ? 
 Who knows if these are her clothes ? Look 
 here ! they've been found in the little cove that's 
 scooped like a grotto under Llandudno rocks, 
 where our girls dress and undress, without 
 being seen ; the fellow that has been lurking in 
 the caves, till the sea should get their boat off, 
 says he found them there." 
 
 William was the first to recognize the torn 
 gown of the unfortunate girl. '^ She has 
 drowned herself ! she's drowned ! she's gone !'' 
 he cried out, and dropped down speechless in a 
 convulsive fit. 
 
 " My poor patient good girl ! Lord ! what 
 are these hurrying judgments ? ^^ Mr. Llewellyn 
 said, groaning and lifted up hands and heart, 
 and eyes, to the Heaven his constant refuge ; 
 but, recollecting that worldly aid was not quite 
 hopeless yet, he sprung up from his one knee 
 on which he had dropped, and gave various 
 directions and advice, calculated to give eifect 
 to what chance remained. 
 
 The presumption was fearfully strong that 
 the loving daughter, newly waked, hearing of the 
 supposed catastrophe of PauU, overshadowed 
 by the guilt of suicide, had rushed to the sea, 
 and there desperately followed his example.
 
 260 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 Yet that her despair should be dehberate 
 enough to resort to a secret creek, where to 
 undress with modesty, or should pause to strip 
 at all, as if but about to bathe in the summer 
 sea, seemed inconsistent. Ere long, the arrival 
 of the distracted girl Kitty apprised them that 
 Ruth had overheard the whole alarm of her 
 father's danger, or determination to surrender 
 his living body to the sea, and while her com- 
 panion had no suspicion of her intent, ( as she 
 acted very deliberately, only moaning lowly to 
 herself,) proceeded softly and barefoot out of 
 the house, over the greensward marsh, so 
 round the back of the foot of the Orme^s Head, 
 down to the beach. 
 
 Yet several ran thither after her clothes 
 were found, and though her body would surely 
 have been washed back on the sands, with 
 such a tide setting strong in, nothing had been 
 discovered. 
 
 Three only had embarked in the daring at- 
 tempt at abduction. Of these the wounded 
 one remained in custody at a farm-house ; the 
 others had lurked in some ancient deep cells 
 which form part of a ruin, supposed a British 
 fort, near the Orme's Head; and these two were 
 now, by the confusion, led to venture forth, 
 (the one with the clothes, as the woman told,) 
 and were allowed by Mr. Llewellyn to try to
 
 FIRST DAY. 261 
 
 haul down their secreted boat, where the high 
 tide had lodged it, that they might with others, 
 row up the shore, but the high surf of a spring 
 tide and gale, rendered the attempt to laimch it 
 abortive. 
 
 William had recovered enough to rejoin those 
 who had reached the top ridges of headland 
 overlooking the beach ; that dreadful prison in 
 which Marmaduke had immured himself to 
 meet death, with a steady eye and stern wel- 
 come, in its frightful slowness of advance, bring- 
 ing his watery shroud to the living man, in the 
 near and nearer surf-foam, and his only dirge 
 in the measured thunder-peal of every falling 
 wave. 
 
 The lone extent of his death vault was how- 
 ever so great, that it was merely at random they 
 could fix on any spot of the long range of pre- 
 cipice, over the brink of which the bolder might 
 halloo down, or the bolder still, such as the 
 samphire-gatherer (turned shepherd) might 
 make an experimental descent from, perhaps so 
 far down as to reach the determined suicide 
 with the voice. Yet this could do little, as it 
 would be too late for him to regain the entrance 
 of his dire watery cloister, and impossible to 
 scale perpendicular crags.
 
 262 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 Thus, in this quiet little green nook of coun- 
 try (under a moon now come forth refulgent, 
 so calm, so safe-looking !) some were hunting 
 for the corpse of its most lovely native-born, 
 with many tears; others were trying to drive a 
 heavy boat down the rough beach stones, with 
 noisy but zealous dint of strength; and others 
 perilously peering over craggy edges of cliff, 
 that lifted them to a level, in their eye, with the 
 tremendous Penmanmaur, seen dusky in moon- 
 light shade, just across the Bay ; and two al- 
 ready fixing ropes (used in taking the puffin's 
 eggs) in two or three parts, to suspend them- 
 selves, even over that brink, and down those 
 terrible and sharp-jutting walls, worse than 
 smooth perpendicular — aU was distress, dismay, 
 and a tragedy in act or expectation, where all 
 had been peace and a fine sunset and happy 
 cottages, so lately. 
 
 A cloudless moon, and brilliant evening sky, 
 burnished, as it seemed, by the fresh sweeping 
 of the breeze across its deep blue and all its 
 stars, now gave to the eye of the man daringly 
 descending by the rope, the whole bird's-eye 
 view of the now very narrow beach below. He 
 saw it already washed over by every dash of 
 the broad sea-sweep, the light snowy foam-
 
 FIRST DAY. 263 
 
 shower, (a treacherous beauty, glittering in the 
 moonshine, lovely yet so deadly,) quite shutting 
 the black conspicuous stones below from his 
 eye, as if overarching whatever was below of 
 life, though this as yet was but an illusion of 
 the sight, for some little of even the lower sandy 
 smooth part of the strand was yet visible on 
 each retirement of the sea. 
 
 A general cry rose now among those behind, 
 on the top — the man suspended having shouted 
 up to the man minding the rope, and he to 
 Mr. Llewellyn, who was on his knees scrambling 
 to look over, and to the rest — that he could see 
 Marmaduke distinctly. 
 
 '^ Cry to him ! " was the general voice. ^'^Can 
 you let down another rope ? What's he doing ? " 
 
 " Not another rope, nor ten an end would 
 reach him ! He waves his hand to us slowly, 
 and he walks quite calm, just stepping back 
 and back a little from the surf : the horridest 
 part of the cliff too, he's under ! It's a sheer 
 wall, I know it well, forty fathoms high over 
 his head ; that 's all he has to step back to ! 
 Only a cavern there is, and that 's shallow; not 
 
 ten minutes^ life will that give him ! 1 've 
 
 cried to him, again, but I hear no voice 
 ver.^' 
 I 've caught birds many a fathom deep, my-
 
 264 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 self/' William exclaimed. " Let me try that 
 other rope, and get down to you ! " he hallooed 
 down. 
 
 " It's quite useless ! " 
 
 Another still more agitated outcry and stir 
 now ran among the group, mixed with a most 
 lamentable cry and groan from the young man. 
 
 " I see somebody or something upright, 
 come all along the beach, narroiv beach 'tis 
 now ! " the man said to those above, and the 
 man on the brink saw it too, " so narrow that 
 the surf-froth breaks over her, and drives her 
 up on the very foundation of the rough rock, 
 off the sand, quite ! " 
 
 " Her ? how ! — is it a woman ? " 
 
 ^' God in Heaven knows what it is ! a woman 
 from the grave, I believe — the moon shines full 
 upon her — ha! noiv he cries to us — he cried 
 out dreadfully then — a melancholy long cry it 
 was. 'Twas not to us he cried — it was to her 
 to that person ; now he 's like a madman ! 
 now he's throwing his arms all about, and to 
 the sky and to the sea ! Hark ! he cried out 
 again ! now he has rushed to meet her^ she 's 
 come up to him. They 're embracing ! Mercy 
 upon us, and keep us, sure it 's a ghost ! If 
 ever I saw graveclothes in my life, that's a 
 shroud it wears ! Look ! look you, man ! look
 
 FIRST DAY, 265 
 
 down all of ye^ is^nt it walking in a shroud ? 
 Yes^ it is a shroud — but it is a living woman ! " 
 
 " But who ? Is it not Ruth ? " 
 
 " Who can see that ? " 
 
 " Do you see them now ? " 
 
 " No, he 's gone^ after throwing his arms 
 round her, gone up the shore like mad, carrying 
 her, I think — yes, \\q flies with her ! " 
 
 " He might as well try to lift her up to us, 
 or the moon, with his arms, as carry her to 
 where she came in — that's sure to be some 
 fathom deep by this time, you know, for all 
 this here part is very hollow, quite a cove, 
 here; he'll meet deep sea directly/' 
 
 '^ Ah ! you' re right. Shepherd, here he comes 
 back with her. Hark ! Did ye hear ? ^ Death ? ' 
 ' Death ! ' God ! God ! ' My child ! ' I heard 
 him then ! Another sea ! — It's Just over 'em ! " 
 
 William had again fainted, and remained in 
 stupor on the heathy ground, dumb and help- 
 less. The two men continued their colloquy, 
 the group above sharing in the horror, and 
 holding their breaths to listen. The depth 
 precluded all possibility of help, and the close- 
 ness of whole sea would have now not allowed 
 time for a single manoeuvre, had any been 
 practicable. 
 
 " I heard a dreadful groan just now ; hark ! — 
 
 VOL. I. N
 
 266 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 Now he's quieter^ and she has sure persuaded 
 him to kneel — they are both kneehng fronting 
 the high wave and as far back as they can get, 
 
 up to the rocks There was a sea ! God have 
 
 mercy ! They're gone No ! — but it must 
 
 have struck them — I could'nt see them for the 
 monstrous leap of the surf ! I thought it 
 
 would have reached up to me almost 1 see 
 
 'em again, now It's for her he groaned and 
 
 for her he ran so wildly, for he was calm as a 
 ghost, and stood like an effigy before — Ha I 
 that was a very thunder ! — Halloo ! Shepherd 1 
 do you see 'em now ? d'ye see ^em still ? *' 
 
 ^^ Stop a moment — there's such a fog of the 
 
 foam ^There's nothing but sea ! nothing but 
 
 deep sea ! The Lord have mercy upon their 
 souls!" 
 
 "AmenP^ Mr. Llewellyn responded, and 
 throwing himself along, hid his face in the 
 withered broom of the height. But the next 
 minute he rose — and begging silence — drew 
 forth his pocket prayer-book, and said — '^ None 
 knows certainly what was the intent of these 
 poor souls in coming hither. I at least will 
 not judge them — but as others may, I take 
 this time — ' Man that is born of a woman, 
 &c.' and faltering, he went through the form 
 of Christian Burial of the Dead.
 
 FIRST DAY. 267 
 
 The body of Marmaduke Paull and that of 
 his ill-fated child, still in that ghastly dress 
 which she had resolutely assumed to meet death 
 with decency, deliberately following him she 
 had so often led, were found in close embrace 
 in a hollow of a little reef of rock, dry at low 
 water, in whose wave-worn cleft no broader 
 than a chest, they lay as in a single coffin 
 formed for two bodies. So ended The Tra- 
 gical Passion of Marmaduke Paull, 
 
 This dwarf-romance (as the rural Doctor 
 calls his bantlings) being at last read to an end, 
 I could not help remarking that I was disap- 
 pointed by it, as having expected more intro- 
 duction of Welsh habits of life and manners — 
 more, in short, of imitation of Scotf s treatment 
 of Scottish subjects and paintings of national 
 manners, 
 
 '^ You mean," said he, '^ that I have given you 
 a romance, and you wanted a novel — one of 
 Welsh life ? '' 
 
 '^'^ Exactly so/' 
 
 "Why, to tell the truth,^^ rejoined he, " such 
 
 it was my design to write, and I have fulfilled 
 
 the design — I have, at home, plenty of such, 
 
 I don 't mean imitations of that great master, 
 
 N 2
 
 268 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 but my native endeavours to interweave Cam- 
 brian manners and domestic plots^ — but I have 
 my own ideas on this subject, which I had best 
 state at once. 
 
 " I confess / see no merit, and find no plea- 
 sure, in those homely dry details, in the novel 
 shape, of common-place life ; pictures of mere 
 local and conventional forms of existence, 
 whether taken from St. Jameses or St. Giles's, 
 or the London cit's fire- side, from town or 
 country. What if they be faithful to the 
 original ? The original is little worth. I 
 maintain that it is absurd to eulogise the mere 
 representation of such things, however truthful. 
 What is the value of genius, if all it brings to a 
 task be superfluous, and mere truth is every 
 thing ? A correct police reporter, if such eu- 
 logy be just, may rival a novelist. I conceive 
 the whole excellence of such literary paintings 
 to consist in the power of the artist to exalt 
 and spiritualize these dull materials by the 
 magical illusions of poetry, to throw round 
 them the romantic attraction of lofty sentiment 
 and picturesque associations. For this reason, 
 in my first reading to you, I think it right to 
 put forth, first an experimental sample of my 
 attempt in this higher walk, hoping that if I
 
 FIRST DAY. 269 
 
 can succeed in that^ if I can reach the graces 
 of poetry, the grandeur of passion, I need not 
 despair of my abihty for the meaner portion of 
 a noveUst's task. If unequal to the effort of 
 infusing a soul into the inert mass, the mere 
 faithful effigies of Welsh life, I would be 
 warned in time, and let it quite alone. There- 
 fore if I ever publish, I will put forth, first, 
 Romance, and postpone the national Novel. 
 
 '^To explain myself," he pursued, "I would 
 ask any one to compare tragedy under the 
 hands of Lillo, and tragedy from the soul of 
 Shakespeare. The dreadful fidelity of Lillo to 
 his original, a dismal murder, in his ' Arden of 
 Feversham,' cannot be denied. Yet I deny 
 that that play is tragedy, for it is not a poem. 
 If truth alone deserved the highest applause, 
 he should rank above Shakespeare. But 
 who is there that does not confess the more 
 intense interest of the murder in Macbeth and 
 in Othello ? See the effect of exalting a har- 
 rowing situation, by the diviner spirit of 
 poetry ! The more truly tragic that situation, 
 the less can it spare eloquent passion and 
 picturesque adjuncts. Without them it lie- 
 comes only harrowing. 
 
 '^ Were it not somewhat late in life's day, I 
 would learn German, devote my whole mind
 
 270 THE MOUNTAIN -DECAMERON. 
 
 to acquiring its graces and powers^ and write 
 tragedy for the German Stage. There is yet 
 a crevice open for dramatic talent. 
 
 " Shall I teU you of a little publishing adven- 
 ture of a former friend of mine many years 
 ago ? Being Muse-bitten^ moreover, passion- 
 ately longing to have a female child (no such 
 wicked or preposterous a desire, one might 
 have thought), and disappointed by the death 
 of one, — ^what does he but clap in, with some 
 wild obscure poetry he happened to print, I 
 could hardly say publish, a good while after — 
 a little lament over this blighted hope. There 
 was certainly nothing absurd in its few stanzas, 
 whatever there might be in the act of publish- 
 ing them. The Blackwood was gracious 
 enough, with much condemnation, to say of 
 the whole, that it exhibited *^ great power of 
 thought and feeling.' A London weekly critical 
 aiFair, controverting the northern potentate's 
 wisdom in its favour, though he ^ kingly did but 
 nod' — selected (as if there was no other nonsense 
 in the volume!) a few stanzas embodying a 
 Father's Grief, smd grew most droll and facetious 
 over a bleeding heart and a dead infant ! with 
 equal elegance and Christian feeling, finished off 
 one of the stanzas half quoted, with a rhyme of
 
 FIRST DAY. 271 
 
 the feeling critic's own — 'Fiddle de dumdedee! ! !' 
 Now, wholly waiving the question as to the justice 
 of the critical judgment, what must be the moral 
 or critical public taste of the times, wherein 
 an emotion (however excessive) so innocent, 
 so grave, so disarming to even just severity, as 
 a father's mourning, could be seized on as a 
 vehicle for venomous waggery ? There was 
 nothing beyond mere taste involved, — no moral, 
 no principle compromised in myfriend^s book, 
 and I remember the very highest Northern 
 critic said, in MS. it was '^undoubtedly the 
 work of a man of genius, of much beauty of 
 fancy, and great tenderness of heart ;' and con- 
 tained ' thoughts and images which seemed to 
 him very charming,' &c. &c. 
 
 " I mention this only to shew that the gentle 
 Literary Garreteer had no moral stimulus to 
 stir his bile. Yet this was one of the oracles 
 of public taste ! " 
 
 Reverting to himself and his mode of life, he 
 amused me with his philosophy, such as it is_, 
 consisting in an absolute death to worldly 
 pride, contempt of all conventional forms but 
 those of decency, aversion to walls and roofs, 
 and delight in a tent (by no means a gay or 
 pic-nic sort of one). He maintains that a 
 shelter sufficient for the weather is the wise
 
 272 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 man*s best home^ and liis tent being sufficient 
 is the best : "My books are for winter," said? 
 he. " Then for travelling, there is the waggon 
 for great distances, where scenery fails in the 
 intervals of stages. In our summer 'pro- 
 gresses,' my boys ride one horse and I another, 
 commonly, but there 's always an anxiety about 
 their grazing places. 
 
 " I never compose so readily, as when walking 
 by the side of a good large waggon, in which I 
 have shipped off my bodily part for London or 
 Holyhead, or elsewhere — by a fine midnight 
 moon. My old broken lyre seems to recover 
 a string long gone, on such occasions. There 
 moves my home, as true to me as the snaiPs, 
 without the weight, into which I have only to 
 turn, when tired or under stress of weather, 
 and with my own straw (for I afford myself that 
 luxury by buying wherever we stop), and the 
 great tarpaulin curtain to peep through, at a 
 moonlight rainbow perhaps, or halo, or the 
 whole crowd of stars in an unbroken vault of 
 intense blue, I am content. What need a 
 hermit regard the ' pride of place ' in the mat- 
 ter ? If a country passenger or two be there, 
 if decent, I am better pleased to be his or her 
 companion, than to have for my chum, in a 
 stage coach, any worthy portly 'jontleman of
 
 FIRST DAY. 273 
 
 Wales ^ troubled with a hiccup." I thus throw 
 together a few of the remarks of the recluse, 
 without troubling thee with mine that elicited 
 them. 
 
 ^'^ Solitude," said he, " has overtaken me like 
 an untimely nightfall. The few who began 
 with me this rough journey of life, have all 
 dropped by the way, and left me to tread its 
 dreariest stage (the last) alone. At little more 
 than half the age assigned to man by Scripture, 
 I had anticipated the most terrible evil of ex- 
 treme old age — the being left lonely in the world 
 — a rehc of times past, lingering in the altered 
 present. Every where my sons and I are. 
 strangers. My world is wherever we pitch tliat 
 tent (pointing to it) ; my summer home, and 
 all my living world, those boys picking flowers 
 round it. Could even this continue ! But 
 ' eheu fugaces — labuntur anni ! ' My way is not 
 their way. They mounting Life's hill, I de- 
 scending it as fast — our paths divide at a very 
 little distance. Merry Christmas has no mer- 
 riment for us, but the contrary. Hollow winds, 
 and the rustling of withered leaves all about 
 our ruined haunts, form but a mournful carol. 
 Correspondents I have forgotten, and doubtless 
 they have long forgotten me. The coming in 
 of the post — (that little event of a country town 
 n5
 
 274 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 whence even the melancholy Cowper seems to 
 have derived some pleasure,) which has so many 
 sorts of flutters for other hearts, has not one 
 for our^s. I live but in the sun — my very being 
 is all over Persian, and does involuntary ho- 
 mage to that parent-luminary. But what a 
 half year's dying — what a very palsy of his 
 being — awaits a man who lives upon sunbeams 
 and leaves, in such a climate as this ! 
 
 "^ It is for others to enjoy winter, to hug 
 themselves in a home of brick, and warm their 
 hearts, like their hands, by artificial fires — for 
 men of equable nerves and tempers, which at- 
 tach hearts to their own hearts thereby, keep 
 sweet peace for ever in their homes, preserve 
 whatever love they may have won in their life's 
 spring, as a defence in its coming autumn, en- 
 sure loving smiles for their fireside, pity for 
 their sick-bed, mourning long and tender for 
 their graves ! But there are those ill-starred 
 paradoxical natures which beyond all others 
 need such tendernesses, and least of all others 
 can conciliate what they so need — natures, at 
 once stern and gentle, soft as woman, yet seem- 
 ing rugged of heart and feelings ; needing home, 
 yet restless there ; loving the wildness of home- 
 less life, yet dying of melancholy in that wild- 
 ness — ever troubled spirits, at war with the very
 
 FIRST DAY. 275 
 
 soothings essential to their peace — ^loathing 
 even that peace, yet sick to the soul in whatever 
 harshly breaks it ! There is but one real home 
 for such beings, and but one bosom — Earth's. 
 If they can call any other their home, or their 
 bosom, it is that which the fowls of heaven 
 share with them — that Heaven's roof of sum- 
 mer-blue; it is the wild breast of the mountain, 
 that they can hide on, to gaze at that quiet blue 
 from betwixt its trees and savage rock-clefts ! 
 
 '^ Yes,'^ he pursued, " the advent of winter 
 that expels me from my wildwood haunts, is the 
 herald of a Siberian banishment, a confinement 
 to worse than a desert — to a rustic town. Oh, thg 
 comfort of a return to my leafy home, with 
 Spring ! We hurry thither. Are our company 
 — Flora's own — come ? Perhaps only one pale 
 lady is there {looking shortness of life, alas !) — a 
 welcome little one, the colour of a sunset, a 
 ^ rose ' though called a ' prim ' one, more 
 precious than the other blushing pride of June 
 — and she waves us a pretty bow, peeping by 
 our seat of last year. But if a coioslip be come, 
 it stirs the triple heart of us ! The boys make 
 a rush at her beauty, and if a knot of cowslips 
 appear, it produces quite a ^sensation.' It is 
 a whole family of distinction at the door (our 
 sod door) all come at once to welcome us. As
 
 27^> THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 we exchange looks with them^ their mere h:)oks 
 bring a very milky way of flowers, a constella- 
 tion of the July ground, along with them for 
 expecting imagination! Already we sit with 
 our curtains drawn by Nature's hand — the 
 young-leafed hedgerow, tinged with a sunlight 
 as tender as its own paly green verdure, not 
 a week old. Oh the luxury of that^r^^ sum- 
 mer tea-drinking ! (Oh, the misery of the last, 
 I will not say yet.) Then we examine (with 
 many a mournful outcry) the various mischiefs 
 Avhich the invading winter-overflows, rains, and 
 melting snows, have been working in our green 
 caravan sera, leaving river-rack and mud here^ 
 or breaking down a pretty mossy root there, 
 till we hardly know our own house again. 
 Then great is our curiosity and search, to find 
 the same smoked stones with which we built 
 our fireplace the summer previous. Having 
 fornix them, and disputed long about the best 
 bit of sod for our breakfast table, at last, all is 
 perfect ! A charming restoration ! From those 
 blackened stones to the (all important) tea- 
 kettle suspended over them — from that and its 
 dear old tune that never tires me, up to that of 
 the feathered young folks over head, and to 
 their chambers of green and golden leafy lattice- 
 work that keep a constant play of sunlight and
 
 FIRST DAY. 277 
 
 shadow on the greensward under it — from 
 highest to lowest, nothing is missing of what 
 charmed us last season! Then does that fine 
 resurrection of a summer, with all its leaves, sun 
 and song, suggest the thought of lAfe's summer 
 — Youth's sweet season ! — Oh the thousand 
 sweetnesses, the multiform pleasant fears, 
 hopes, emotions, sympathies — tender, social, ge- 
 nerous — aye, noble ! — that flutter about young 
 green hearts, keeping such a constant dance in 
 the bosom as do those myriad young leaves 
 keep playing on that chequered sod. 
 
 " I recall the warmth they were ever attended 
 with — the mind's eye never tired, the heart's 
 glow never chilled, the expectation never flagg- 
 ing — every day promising a beautiful To- 
 morrow ! Our fire is rekindled, our couch re- 
 carpetted and re-embroidered more beautifully 
 than ever. The fallen leaves are all replaced 
 by tenderer brighter leaves ; — but that May- day 
 of the mind — but that fine fire in the heart — 
 but the whispering of the voice of Hope, the 
 promise of the coming time — what is become of 
 those ? when shall that fire burn again ? What 
 has been the conclusion of that most ravishing 
 prelude of heart-harmony ? All, all ended in a 
 solitary sitting down by a wild wood ! Where 
 is the ecstatic-dreaming young man whose Eden
 
 1278 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 was every primrose-bank ? Is it I, yellow as 
 autumn, bitter as winter, hopeless as death, 
 here, lagging towards a nameless grave, that 
 must answer '^ Here ! "* 
 
 EVENING. 
 
 Bank of the Dhyrrwyd River, near Maentwrog. 
 
 The Major and the Parson having set forth 
 on a chase for subscribers to the " Sacred 
 Poems " of the latter — the Doctor amused our 
 next fit of idleness (which, following the lan- 
 guor of a sultry day, disposed us to sit down 
 on the bank of a little brook that chanced to 
 run under a hanging ash tree growing horizon- 
 tally out of a ledge of earthy rock,) with cita- 
 tions from his Anthology of Unknown Poets, as 
 he calls a MS. collection of his. 
 
 '^ I have had the curiosity," said he, *^ to se- 
 lect from whatever writers seem to bear the 
 true banner of the muse, however lowly their 
 worldly poetic rank, such specimens as serve to 
 illustrate the poetical character ; as seem to
 
 FIRST DAY. 279 
 
 emanate from that peculiar combination of 
 feelings^ frame of nerves, and worldly accidents 
 perhaps, which go to make up that most unen- 
 viable distinction from the ordinary human cha- 
 racter. From the simplest taint of this malady 
 (that has the odd infirmity of groaning in song 
 instead of in the usual way,) to the inveterate 
 and hopeless height of it, when events have ex- 
 asperated the slight spot into an open plague- 
 boil, and the gentler constitutional melancholy 
 of birth has festered into the shut-up despair 
 of adult or declining age — from the pensive 
 play of Fancy, to the melancholic horror of the 
 dream of the Mad at Heart — I have culled every 
 specimen I could find. Together they might 
 perhaps prove a truthful commentary to D'ls- 
 raeli's most touching and life-like picture of 
 such character, in which I have found matter of 
 perpetual wonder and regret that the name of 
 D'Israeli is not enrolled among the ' Poets of 
 Great Britain ' in a very high rank — for, as the 
 character he paints is essentially poetical, it 
 seems impossible that any but a true poet could 
 have so entered into its hidden mysteries, and 
 spread its least-known recesses like a map be- 
 fore us. Yet so far as I know, however emi- 
 nent as a ' literary ' character, the author has
 
 280 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 not exhibited that capacity which he must 
 possess, of wooing and winning the Muse. 
 
 " The next thing I will read to you (for none 
 but myself can read my penmanship) seems to 
 exhibit that weariness of rest, that life-long 
 restlessness, that YSLgohond passion for change 
 of scene which drives some of these eccentric 
 miserables over the world, without a tie to any 
 spot of it, who begin with luxuriating in loneli- 
 ness on a sunny sod, or on the cowslip bank of 
 the green channel of a brook, that hides them 
 from those walking in the field above, begin 
 thus in youth — ^but end with cursing on the 
 straw of the madhouse cell, or hiding from the 
 whole world in broken-hearted solitude, and a 
 self-reproved yet resistless utter hatred of that 
 world and all it holds. 
 
 " In a sunny day," continued he, " I divert 
 myself with the gentler pensive kind of these 
 Songs of the Unknown, as with the first yellow 
 tints of some wood, where autumn (though 
 winter's harbinger) looks beautiful. In a drear 
 day, I find the sterner sort more in unison with 
 my mood, as I would walk by that same wood 
 ^n confirmed winter, when its former remains of 
 beauty, now fallen, lie all underfoot, adding to 
 the howling horror of the wind, as they drift
 
 FIRST DAY. 281 
 
 before it^ like the sea-wrack riding the surgy 
 sweeps of the most lonely sea, when the stripped 
 boughs are fighting one another, clashing like a 
 whole army of stark naked men, who, throwing 
 off armour and all defence, retain but their bare 
 swords, with which to rage, be struck and 
 strike, kill and die. 
 
 ODE TO MY HOUR OF DEATH. 
 
 BY A WANDERER IN WALES. 
 
 Where dost thou waylay me, oh Hour, 
 Watching like some wild beast in jungle dark, 
 
 Me to devour ? 
 Hour of the last leap of Life's fluttering spark ! 
 Assume the very form, 
 In which thou 'It ride the storm 
 Of death 1 appear ! appear ! thou shapeles Terrible ! 
 Paint on yon sunshiny bank's green 
 The Mirage of my parting scene, 
 When on the die of Life's last sand, hangs Judgment, 
 Heaven, and Hell ! 
 
 By what inn -hut — what wild wayside, 
 What buzzing pauper room — what loathsome bed, 
 
 On which have many died, 
 
 Grim dost thou hide ? 
 Who lifts a fall'n wayfaring stranger's head ? 
 
 Who closes the blue lips, 
 
 And eyes in long eclipse,
 
 282 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 Or waits to close, — for decency not pity ? 
 I yearn, I long«to look upon 
 Her who shall whisper ** He is gone 1" 
 
 Oh, be it some grey crone, far from the hated city ! 
 
 My heart, since I have thought and felt. 
 Only in rustic haunts, to rustics only, 
 Where peace and pastoral dwelt. 
 Would ope or melt — 
 . Social in loneliness, in cities lonely : 
 An old dame's spinning wheel 
 Taught it to sweetly feel. 
 Dancing to its mean music by some autumn-tinted wood; 
 Who could have thought that pensive taste 
 Foretold life's mournful total waste, 
 A life, and death, and grave of stranger solitude ? 
 
 But some, for strangers on the earth. 
 And aliens in their native land to roam, 
 
 Are marked from birth ; 
 Men of no country unless heaven's blue dome, 
 A melancholy home ! — 
 
 Of some chance spot of sky. 
 
 Or star which first our eye, 
 New-born, was roll'd on, shall we make our native spot? 
 
 As wisely as " Twy Country " call, 
 
 Some empty spot of this great ball, 
 Where chanced our ill-starred birth, where other ties 
 are not. 
 
 Hence of no Jiome death-bed serene 
 I dream ; enough for me, self stung, self driven, 
 
 (Lifting Time's dreadful screen) 
 That it be green. 
 These mountains' heads bent o'er me and yon heaven.
 
 FIRST DAY. 283 
 
 Are my dear children there ? 
 Far be they, oh 1 afar, 
 ' Till Pain and you have done your worst, dark Hour ! 
 But when our Mother too has done, 
 And veiled my face— let them look on 
 That * face-cloth '* green, and leave a tear-drop and a 
 flower. 
 
 Oh, dark Hour ! on me, wandering, 
 Leap by some river's high and lonely source, 
 
 Whose little moss.-lapped spring 
 May softly sing ; 
 The pure cold blessing of whose new-born course 
 
 My dying thirst may reach, 
 
 Bowered by old oak or beach. 
 Hollowly murmuring the long divorce 
 
 'Twixt the tired body and tired soul, 
 
 'Twixt its clay hut and yon bright whole ; 
 And flags and long grass wind my long-unburied corse! 
 
 'Tis something, in our friendless doom, 
 To 'scape the false, th' unfriendly, and the strange ; 
 
 Nor is such green sick-room, 
 
 Of wild-wood gloom. 
 One unbefitting the most mighty change, 
 
 Of th' heart to very clod, 
 
 Of mind to demigod 1 
 Earth's sighing stranger to Heaven's welcomed guest ! 
 
 (There man, unhelped by man, must grope 
 
 His dim way !) or, if faints Faith's hope,— 
 Change from short troubling to eternal rest. 
 
 * The name used for a piece of cloth purposely shaped to 
 cover the face of a corpse. Brand's Popular Antiquities.
 
 i284 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 NIGHT. 
 
 Harlech Castle and Village. 
 
 Antique^ romantic Harlech ! Whoever 
 can find a place in his mind or heart not pre- 
 occupied by worldher feelings, for a short feast 
 of philosophic melancholy, let him repair to 
 this poor yet picturesque group of wild homes, 
 by the moon, as we did. 
 
 Here is a grand skeleton of a famous fortress, 
 with its round towers lifted to the sky by a no- 
 ble promontory, not jutting over the sea waves, 
 as all books of direction for Welsh travelling 
 strangely represent it to do, but distant a good 
 mile of sand-hills. Here was once a famous 
 congress of great men, held by the first Ed- 
 ward, and vestiges of a place of consequence 
 remain, vestiges only. Now it seems, to a gay 
 and peopled town, what a mummy is to a living 
 body. The stir of its vitality, the voice of 
 eager interests, and the pride of architectural 
 form totally gone, there yet lingers a something 
 in its very desolateness which distinguishes it 
 from a village wretched ab origine — wretched 
 now though it be, in the eyes of all but such 
 travellers as ourselves.
 
 FIRST DAY. 28^ 
 
 Its precipice of a street^ green^ and uncouth 
 with slabs of the mountain's own rock starting 
 through the soil; its houses, with oldest thatch, 
 bristling down lower than a man's head ; the 
 doors, half a man's height high, dark within, 
 weather-stained without, and lichened all over 
 as damp rocks in the thick of woods — maugre 
 all this, tve found a certain charm in this place, 
 especially as viewed by moonlight. Nor is 
 business, nor are politics, wholly at a stand 
 or undiscussed in solitary Harlech. There is 
 knitting of stockings ; there is drying of nets ; 
 there is busy gossiping between the old, sitting 
 at their doors on seats of the natural rock. 
 The pohtical agitation is indeed not Radical, ' 
 nor anywise akin to that of Reform in its " fine 
 phrensy,^^ but purely Harlechian, indigenous 
 to the place. The politics are piscatory, having 
 reference to the chief source of prosperity to 
 that little knot of hermits, consisting of fishers 
 and their "useless old,'^ and a few tradespeople 
 whom they help to support. In the blue sea, 
 which lies nobly expansive, all open to their 
 high and airy locality, is generally to be espied 
 some little fishing-boat purveying for the wants 
 of the natives, rarely out of sight of shore ; a 
 white speck, midway between Harlech and that 
 opposite curve of shore which presents another
 
 386 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 sea-rock with its castle-ruins (Criccieth) almost 
 facing this nobler one. On this lonely adven- 
 turer in the " deep waters/' and the chances of 
 its success, and the probable hour of its '^ arri- 
 val," and the price of the fish it may bring 
 according to the glut or scarcity, every eye is 
 fixed, and every tongue employed. The mound 
 of the noble ruin is the Stock Exchange, or 
 Bourse of these aged citizens, where they con- 
 gregate to discuss all these points. The ex- 
 pectation of mails from the continent during 
 the war was not greater in the city of London, 
 than that which actuates the good people of the 
 '' city'' of Harlech, (for so most little ancient 
 villages are denominated in Wales, by their 
 dwellers,) when, as the little sail nears the sandy 
 cove of its anchorage, old and young hobble, 
 or skip, or toddle down open-mouthed, to meet 
 the important ^^ old man of the sea,'^ with his 
 tidings of his cargo. 
 
 The Rural Doctor seemed quite at home in 
 this wild place, as evinced by many cordial 
 shakes of many shaking and withered hands of 
 old people that the warmth of the night had 
 kept abroad. A very grey grandmother, re- 
 membering his boys from previous summer 
 visits, went hobbling in-doors for gingerbread 
 and apples to treat them with.
 
 FIRST DAY. 287 
 
 Higher sympathies and loftier reminiscences 
 seemed to invite us to enter as we reached the 
 ruinous castle. As sentimental traveller s^ this 
 record of our days^ thou vrilt remember, deals 
 only with the emotions, reflections, moods, and 
 fancies, excited by the objects we find in our 
 way, and leaves the history and purely topo- 
 graphical description of such object to the 
 professed tour-writers, whose numbers are suf- 
 ficient to afford the reader great choice of such 
 descriptions. Something of the same distinc- 
 tion as exists between a map and a picture of 
 the same place, is intended here to be produced, 
 compared with those more precise representa- 
 tions, if the word '^ picture" may be permitted ' 
 to such desultory touches. Of all that relates 
 to the bygone days of Harlech, therefore, and 
 the vicissitudes of its castle, we stop not to 
 discourse ; yet there are incidents among these, 
 as in the histories of most Welsh fortresses, 
 which come fairly within the sphere of the sen- 
 timental traveller. Such is the fact of the most 
 heroic and memorable of (atleast^W^i^A) queens 
 having found an asylum in this remote fortress. 
 Margaret of Anjou, after losing all her jewels, 
 baggage, &c. and narrowly escaping with her 
 life after the defeat of the Royalist army in 
 1460, fled hither from Coventry. Having been
 
 288 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 waylaid and attacked by the way, hither she 
 came, hunted, dispirited, and desolate, to rest 
 awhile, before she faced again the bitter storm 
 of her fallen destiny in defence of her husband 
 and king. As we crossed the now dry moat by 
 a little earthen mound instead of the draw- 
 bridge, and stood within the ample area of the 
 walls, lighted by the moonshine streaming 
 through the loopholes in the stone, formed for 
 discharge of arrows, and through yawning clefts, 
 wild-grated by branches of intercrossing trees, 
 which have grown old within what afforded her 
 a shelter at least, if not a home (now a cold 
 shelter even for the bat or owl), we could 
 not help recalling the terrible England of that 
 bloody period, and comparing it with our yet 
 bloodless England, not without some touch of 
 mixed horror and pity for the madness of some 
 moderns (patriots, too, forsooth ! ) who play 
 with the idea of Civil War, as might an idiot 
 with a couching tiger, which, poor wretch, 
 pleased with its "imposing attitude'' and grin, 
 grins back that fearful ^Memonstration'^ of 
 deadliness, with his own poor credulous smile ! 
 Restricting our sympathies to that throneless 
 Queen, however, we fancied the feelings with 
 which she crossed that moat, noiv a pretty 
 green and daisied fairy-dale for the village young
 
 FIRST DAY. 289 
 
 to play in. What Radical patriot would not 
 wish it once more to heave brimming full with 
 bloodied water, even though a few of those 
 village-fry might lie there floating in the cause 
 of ^^ sweet liberty ? ^^ I say, we imagined her 
 feelings when the chains of the drawn-up bridge 
 clanked behind her ; we saw her faded, grand, 
 and melancholy form, sitting with head on 
 hand, when retired for the night, and watching, 
 through that small and narrow light-hole, which 
 constant peril of life alone allowed to the homes 
 of our forefathers, the yellow brilliance of the 
 flashing sea, far stretching out in the moonlight 
 of some such night as that we then enjoyed. 
 Strange and bitter, indeed, must have been the , 
 contrast between her rightful palace-home in 
 the heart of her husband^s empire, where she 
 received the homage of a yet undistracted 
 people, and that wild, remote, and melancholy 
 fortress, with its wind-beat site, its surround- 
 ing sands, and stormy sea, which had unbarred 
 its gates in mercy to her misery, rather than 
 in duty to her regal dignity ! 
 
 " Bid her farewell, a martyr and a queen !" — Shakspeare. 
 
 In accordance with the political sentiment 
 inspired by the recollection of the wars of the 
 Roses, I suppose it was, that my companion 
 murmured forth, in the moonlight ruin, the 
 
 VOL. I. O
 
 290 THE MOUNTAIN.DECAMERON. 
 
 following Ode, or whatever it is to be called,, 
 with which this Day must end : — 
 
 A FATHER'S WISH IN THE ENGLAND OF 183- 
 
 When Summer day, too fiercely fair, 
 Brews thunder, then to thatch and eave 
 
 The wild -winged children of the air. 
 Though loth their fields of blue to leave,. 
 Forewarned, repair. 
 
 From singing in grass green and deep, 
 
 The mother calls her infant in, 
 Though loth from its lov'd flowers to keep ; 
 
 And ere the rain and roar begin,. 
 Sings him to sleep. 
 
 Soft through that blustering thundering dark,. 
 
 Sleeps nestled bird, sleeps cradled boy ; 
 Till once more blessed blue and lark 
 
 Come beautiful, then, waked to joy, 
 Quits each its ark. 
 
 Since England's long bright day, at last 
 A hideous thunder-storm is brewing ; 
 
 While wise and good men look, aghast — 
 And fools, impatient — for wild ruin, 
 Till it be past. 
 
 My children ! in some glen untrod, 
 
 I would that under a green tree 
 I might your forms lay soft on sod, 
 
 Endym ion -like, to sleep as he, — 
 I would to God !
 
 FIRST DAY. 291 
 
 Though true your mimic death, to me — 
 
 Though I, alas 1 too old to hope 
 The passing of this storm to see, 
 
 And bid your eyes on peace to ope, — 
 "Would it might be I 
 
 So dim our day, so sure wrath's rod, 
 
 I would that e'en your own sweet land 
 Might be unseen, unknown, untrod, 
 
 Till high God stay his dreadful hand, 
 I would to God I 
 
 END OF THE FIRST DAY. 
 
 02
 
 THE 
 MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 SECOND DAY. 
 
 ARGUMENT. 
 
 The Quaker here sends up to his city friend Hogg, some 
 account of the more wild or solemn superstitions peculiar to 
 the Principality, also one of his rural friend's very best 
 Miniature Romances. 
 
 MORNING. 
 
 From the Promontory of Penlynn that di-vddes the two 
 Estuaries, Traeth Mawr and Traeth Bach. 
 
 ^^ Once more upon the waters ! " as a more 
 ambitious Pilgrim breaks forth. On our wa- 
 ters, our best beloved, on so narrow a slip of 
 pastoral land that we can both hear and see the 
 blue (or rather many coloured) sea weltering 
 gently and brilliantly glistening on each side of 
 it, being almost at its extreme point. A true 
 shepherd's peninsula is this ! From every ele- 
 vated point of this most rural and secluded 
 neck of land (full of mossy knolls and little rich 
 meadows, contrasted and jumbled together with
 
 SECOND DAY. 293 
 
 wild heathy spots, farmhouses as grotesque and 
 ivied as some old monastic cell of a wilderness) 
 we catch two totally distinct landscapes, as 
 each river, the Glasslyn, which forms the great 
 — and the Dyrrwhyd that widens into the 
 lesser — Traeth, presents its own moimtain 
 shores. A little rock-sheltered seaport (Forth 
 Madoc) is just near enough to look beautiful, 
 but not to be heard ; a few white sails over- 
 topped by the wall of cliiF, under which they 
 lurk, the breezy blue aerial freedom of a whole 
 sea sky, newly uncurtained, — its mists yet not 
 quite scattered ; a vast cone of a mountain 
 overtopping those ocean cliffs in their turn, 
 and that sun-glorified beautiful blue arch of 
 heaven above all, while on this side, dim 
 forms seem to be moving on air, across the 
 mouth of the tide river, the embankment on 
 which they move, being not seen from this 
 point — then the illimitable background of up- 
 sparkling ocean, and restless horizon — surely 
 God never painted a nobler picture ! 
 
 It is very early — we are not long risen from 
 our tents, and looking down on those solemn 
 sands and their wild vast channel. While I 
 write (waiting the boiling of our kettle in true 
 Egyptian fashion) I look down on the shelly 
 expanse of the Traeth Bach, Brine pools left
 
 294 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 by the tide now out, are shining blue to the sky- 
 in patches — white wings of the many sea-birds 
 flicker brilliantly and glance back light to the 
 low sun, yet mild on the sea's brink, as they 
 hover and dip for the fish left there. There is 
 something solemn and peculiar in the cries of 
 these fowl to land folks. Here their plaintive 
 wailings are all that break the soundless peace 
 of the broad river bed (the strong sea retired) 
 and their aerial white specks almost the only 
 motion : — for the human figures, where the 
 poor people are already fishing also, in those 
 pools, and wading the fresh water that still 
 flows down the mid channel, are too distant 
 and dwindled to be very visible motions in the 
 picturesque vast with mountains all about. Yet 
 their dim-seen blue and red country-fashion 
 dresses serve to enliven the novel prospect, the 
 horizon-sun^s long flashes fitfully presenting 
 those colours of their garb, and casting their 
 long shadows, which do stir visibly. All besides 
 is marble-smooth gilded desert of quicksands 
 — at least, shifting sands — for of that nature is 
 a considerable portion of these Traeths. 
 
 But a nobler spectacle is above ; the disrob- 
 ing to the sun of all Snowdon's morning moun- 
 tains. The resurrection, if I may venture the 
 term — of the greater beauties of mountains^
 
 SECOND DAY. 295 
 
 from the night horror of their mere dusky out- 
 lines, has something in it of awful and even su- 
 pernatural in look, that almost attracts the 
 fancy toward the true tremendous re-appear- 
 ance of all things after the Grave's own long 
 night. There are to be seen, high up Snowdon, 
 peculiar tints of umber red, mixed with grey 
 blue, the former ferruginous probably but whis- 
 pering to fancy of ancient volcanic ruins. But 
 now the horrid sable which all night long had 
 frowned round their grim brows, kept melting 
 away into silvery, rosy, vermilion light ! Mists 
 (beautiful as the sweetest morning could make 
 them, with its tender blue brilliance and tender 
 pale gold of sunlight), curled, smiled, and 
 waved, transparent, over those grim hues still 
 peeping through. The chaotic lofty view of 
 their confused groups — the rolling blackness of 
 the mist {itself now become their most exqui- 
 site beauty !) was food for lofty phantasy. As 
 I sat alone on the greensward, whither I had 
 climbed, I could not help thinking of the 
 emerging of the shrouded dead from darkness, 
 from dust, from lead, from mould, from marble 
 — to the light of the Last Morning! There 
 was a soft silent sublimity in the scene and the 
 hour, that led on the thought to that hour 
 when all graves shall yawn, and all earth yield
 
 296* THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 up its dead and its darkness to a sun that shall 
 never set^ and the shocking shroud which hung 
 its horror on the grimness of the corruptible 
 body^ in the long night of death, drop or 
 change into the robes of the incorruptible ! of 
 the eternal angel, emerging from those terrific 
 ruins of man ! of the angel, or whatever else 
 our finite conceptions can picture, as the beauty 
 of a soul admitted to the presence of God! 
 {' Am I mad, most noble Festus ?' I believe it 
 is but the intoxicating oxygen of this glorious 
 morning.) 
 
 Assembled all at breakfast we began to talk 
 over superstitions of mountaineers, which seem 
 borrowed from such aerial spectacles. 
 
 "The superstitions of Wales,'^ the Doctor 
 remarked, "form no part of the popular jooe^ri/ 
 of our age; yet there exist many grandly imagi- 
 native. How few know any thing about our 
 Cwn Anmvn,^ that is ' Dogs of the Sky,' but 
 which their office, as assigned, would warrant 
 us to call the Bloodhounds of Souls ! by earthly 
 analogy. Sudden fires trail along the heavens 
 at the moment of a^ dying person's body and soul 
 taking leave, and that light is no other than that 
 
 * Anmvn. — The bottomless abyss ; Hell, in the ancient 
 sense, as the ** bourn '* of all spirits.
 
 SECOND DAY. 297 
 
 fire which each of that terrible pack always has 
 following after like a chain ; and sounds like the 
 yellings of an earthly hunt^ may be heard in the 
 dumbness of midnight, and which hunting is 
 no less than the chase of the parting soul by 
 these fiends of the sky, as it flies towards 
 Heaven^s gate before them, the flight for no- 
 thing less than eternal life or death ! What 
 superstition affecting mortal life and its brevity, 
 and its briefer pains, can compare in terror, in 
 wildness, or sublimity with this ? with these 
 bowlings and huntings for immortal souls, these 
 wildfires trailed by demon bloodhounds, across 
 all the deep-blue Chase of the midnight hea- 
 vens, and the issue of the dread hunting never 
 revealed to the mourner, upgazing from the 
 gate of the house of mourning? The light 
 borne in the hand of a spirit, moving the way a 
 corpse shall soon be borne, and called the Can- 
 ivyll Corph — Corpse Candle — is better known ; 
 and a solemn fancy is that ! 
 
 " More terrible and forcible in mournful con- 
 ception is the strange being that crosses the 
 twilight path of the Welsh mountaineer, and 
 which warns him by its mere presence, of a 
 death in his house near at hand. The Cyoe- 
 ivraeth is the likeness of a woman, frightfully 
 cadaverous of visage, bringing all the festering 
 o 5
 
 298 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 horror of a three weeks' burial in its grim yet 
 not utterly disfeatured loathsomeness, abroad 
 into the world of life, divulging the foulest se- 
 crets of the grave ! This form stands direct in 
 some lonesome path of the startled person, toss- 
 ing her long grisly arms in the air and wringing 
 her earthy lengths of wasted hand, and — shaking 
 down her already worm-beset hair over her eye- 
 holes, and their sunken dead-lights fixed upon 
 his, steady as the basilisk's on its prey, but 
 gloomy — sets up such a cry of wild weeping, and 
 utters two words only, so terrible in their 
 power, that they for the moment arrest the 
 moving blood in the veins of the hearer — the 
 Welsh words signifying ^ Oh, my wife ! ' or 
 *• Oh, my husband ! ' according to the sex of 
 the shortlived object of its fatal forewarning. 
 
 *^ There exists in Wales also," said the Doc- 
 tor, '^ some vague superstitious idea of that tre- 
 mendous kind which gives eifect to the CEdi- 
 pus, and to Greek Tragedy in general : — the be- 
 lief in the occasional operation of an overruUng 
 destiny, impelling its victims to forbidden deeds, 
 and hence preparing for the really innocent, 
 but apparently guilty outcasts of human sym- 
 pathy, penal dooms, and hideous pitfalls of 
 perdition, \inforeseen and inevitable ! The re- 
 currence of certain crimes and fates in certain
 
 SECOND DAY. 299 
 
 families, may be remarked in English as well as 
 Welsh annals, but I don^t know that any in- 
 stance, equally striking with what in this coun- 
 try has fallen under my own notice, has been 
 recorded, though such may, doubtless, have 
 really occurred. 
 
 " What I allude to is, the existence of a fa- 
 mily, in which, for several generations, the be- 
 hests of law have been working tragedies and 
 decimating its members. The broad features of 
 the fatal fortunes of these persons, as I learned 
 from a clergyman of their district, are these. 
 They exhibit in early life the very best disposi- 
 tions. Their first adult years in rustic servi- 
 tude or under the paternal roof, fulfil that early 
 promise. Their first attachment is followed by 
 a first step in crime — they swerve from the 
 happy and flowered path of their infantine in- 
 nocence, their youthful industry — ^but it is mar- 
 riage that seals their dismal doom. It matters 
 not how prudent, how well omened that union 
 may appear — the next and no distant step is — 
 in blood ! 
 
 "An old Brecknockshire magistrate in Builth 
 now deceased, told me, that he had himself, in 
 the course of his life, known three capital con- 
 victions of persons belonging to this stock, had 
 seen two of these (with an interval) hanging in
 
 SOO THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 chains. One odd fact which he added was 
 perhaps more strange than all. A woman — 
 either widow or mother^ he forgot which — sate 
 knitting stockings in the sun^ at the foot of the 
 gibbet, which detained from its parent earth 
 the ghastly carcase of so near a friend. It 
 stood on a corner of a hilly heath, not far from 
 her home. 
 
 ^^ Charity might perhaps ascribe this seeming 
 apathy to its contrary, excess of feeling, a 
 morbid melancholy, with as much probability 
 of truth, as to callousness in the woman, to 
 which last my informant Mr. P. attributed it. 
 If we should go further, and connect the act 
 with the seeming dark Predestination which had 
 consigned the victim (whose red right hand had 
 been held by an Invisible Inscrutable Hand 
 and Power, when it 'broke into the bloody 
 house of life ') — to that sad barred and wind 
 beat grave in the air, demanding the passing 
 traveller's curse instead of prayer; if we should, 
 I say, see in that lone woman's selecting the 
 many nailed ^i^5e^ tree, with its putrified burthen 
 or skeleton, for her summer seat, instead of the 
 green tree, with its pure fresh head of beauty 
 and shade — only a passive resignation, equally 
 mystic and involuntary with the congenital 
 curse) — to the fate inflicted by it on her seared
 
 SECOND DAY. 301 
 
 heart — the image becomes, not only affecting but 
 almost sublime ! I am anticipating, however, 
 the story I shall now read, at your desire." 
 
 THE DAUGHTER OF THE 
 DOOMED FAMILY. 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 In a wild part of Brecknockshire there lives 
 a family widely disseminated, whose misfortune 
 it has been to have added so many to the 
 Welsh Criminal Calendar, for great crimes, as 
 to have brought on the family name a degree 
 of odium, perhaps natural, but, nevertheless, 
 unjust. To avoid adding to that injustice, I 
 shall suppress the name ; but whosoever may 
 trouble themselves to inquire, in almost any 
 part of the county, cannot fail of being in- 
 formed of this, as well as many other particulars 
 relating to this family, of a strange and melan- 
 choly character, some too fearful for belief. 
 So strong is this impression that many honest
 
 302 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 members of this stock (said to be of Irish ex- 
 traction) have actually taken false names. It 
 is a common artifice of malignity with some 
 enemy, to affiliate the object of his wrath on the 
 race of the S falsely ; and where an inno- 
 cent and esteemed member of it (and there live 
 many such) is described by a friendly neighbour 
 as belonging to it, it is in such an undertone, 
 with such a solemnity of secresy, as if he were 
 actually whispering some murder committed by 
 that member, instead of the very innocent mis- 
 fortune of having been born of that race. As 
 an instance of renouncement of name (to the 
 Welsh native in itself no light trial) I may 
 mention what was told me by a clerical magis- 
 trate, whose church is situated in the district 
 of the aboriginal settlement, that a farmer who 
 bore the name, having occasion to enroll this 
 unfortunate cognomen on some official list, ear- 
 nestly desired to be allowed to substitute his 
 christian for his surname. Perhaps it is unfor- 
 tunate for these poor people that they are not 
 wholly strangers to a sad superstition, the same 
 on which the Greek tragedy so much depends 
 for its solemn interest. 
 
 It may well be imagined, that on a suscep- 
 tible melancholic turn of mind, the dark his- 
 tory of its ancestry might work with fearful
 
 SECOND DAY. 303 
 
 effect, and even possibly assist to add a fresh 
 victim to that fatahty, or that mysterious mo- 
 ral conformation, which has already rendered 
 the name a misfortune, and overshadowed in- 
 nocent, as well as guilty, of those bearing it, 
 with somewhat of mystery and horror. A 
 being impatient of the stigma cast on his whole 
 race, thence readier to admit an unbrotherly 
 grudge against his kind, ruminating on the cre- 
 dibihty of such predooming to crime and 
 penal pains, as the sad history of his forefathers 
 would seem to whisper to the yet innocent de- 
 scendant, might come at last to dream himself 
 borne along by an irresistible hand in the dark, 
 toward a sea of blood. Such a sad enthusiast 
 would be likely to mistake the first violent im- 
 pulse of passions, feebly resisted, for that in- 
 scrutable decree, and terrible hand. 
 
 The connection of the preceding narration 
 with the following story, will shortly appear. 
 
 There is a little-frequented long valley in 
 Carnarvonshire, following the course of the 
 small river Lyfni, remarkable for the union o 
 pastoral beauty and subUmity. The mountain 
 Snowdon is seen from hence in a defined shape, 
 extremely rare. The distinctness with which 
 the vast peak, rising above a chaotic mass of 
 inferior yet stupendous mountains, seems to
 
 304 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 bar all egress, terminating the long vista, is pe- 
 culiar to this point of view. The slopes on 
 each hand rise rocky yet pastoral, with so grand 
 a sweep, that the castellated top-cliifs curve 
 round, and overhang the vast concave of the 
 mountain's breast, somewhat like the surf of a 
 mountain wave's top-ridge, when it hangs belly- 
 ing over the green trough of the sea, a moment 
 before its fall. The brawling sparkling river 
 along the bottom, and the lonely and unvisited 
 lake or rather lakes of Lynneau Nantle com- 
 plete this Alpine landscape. 
 
 At the date of this narrative all its beauties 
 lay dead in a shroud of drifted snow, and 
 vaulted by a black-blue evening sky of Jan- 
 uary. A livid shining dark streak, with stiff 
 flags and reeds singing in their sheaths of ice, 
 alone told where (in the universal marbled 
 white) lay the lovely pastoral water of that 
 lake ; and what seemed but a formal-shaped 
 snow drift, with a wreath of blue smoke curling 
 up from it, alone revealed the comfortable farm 
 house called Pen y Coed, close by the water ; ex- 
 cept that several more drifts, cone-shaped or 
 square, also hinted of peat-stack, cow-house, 
 barns, and sundries, only to be guessed at by any 
 traveller not quite at the house-end. A Mr. Sep- 
 timus Morris, a young Oxford collegian of Jesus,
 
 SECOND DAY. 305 
 
 the son of the good couple in that farm, who 
 was spending his Christmas at home, stopped on 
 an eminence of the road leading towards Bedd- 
 Gelart to admire the sudden glory of prospect 
 which unexpectedly broke on him. He had 
 deemed the shut-up sun long set, so inky was 
 the sky, and the profound ravine so night-like 
 in its chill, when suddenly a pyramidal tower 
 of purest alabaster, with pale gilding, seemed to 
 rise in heaven, and there stood shining, the 
 back ground of sky retaining all its luridness 
 to give it grander eiFect. It was Y Wyddva, 
 the highest point of Snowdon, with all its glazed 
 snow, glistening as if all spar, with the intensity 
 of frost, while all below, a driving cloud of the 
 fine dust of the surface snow, was borne like 
 the sands of the great deserts in a whirlwind- 
 volume round the very heads of the lower 
 mountains, stretched across the vale's end, so 
 that only that mighty head, glorified by the 
 last sunshine caught from the sun's looking out 
 half below the distant sea, was visible, cut off 
 from the world of driving storm below, yet 
 looking peace and summer, like a temple — the 
 giant buttresses of which were partly unrobed 
 to perfect the sublime picture, being the two 
 sons of the monarch mountain, Cryb-y-Dystyll 
 and Cryb-Coch.
 
 306 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 As the young man stood admiring^ in spite 
 of the cutting wind^ stock still, a tint of purple 
 changed the snow chrystal to amethyst, a rosy 
 faint flush like a hectic cheek succeeded, till it 
 languished quite away, and the deep and dread- 
 ful gloom of an inclement night without a 
 moon, began to thicken visibly that instant. 
 But as Mr, Septimus turned towards home in 
 haste, his eye caught a figure (through a blind- 
 ing sleet) of some one descending that craggy 
 road high above and far, who seemed to lift 
 clasped hands as in despair, at sight of that last 
 smile of daylight, while the slow and dragging 
 gait seemed to prove that terror not un- 
 founded. The road being screened by the 
 steep rising declivity, had been left partly free 
 of snow by the wind sweeping over it with its 
 drifts, so that the figure, mufiled in the snow 
 fallen in some loftier part of its way, was very 
 visible. A traveller in such a place and hour 
 was very rare. Mr. Morris waited its approach 
 in vain. He reverted his steps to seek the ob- 
 ject, but it avoided him, or had returned the 
 path it came. 
 
 That evening the old farmer and wife and 
 son ' Septy ' sate over a rather novel meal, a 
 ^^dish of tea" made from a pound which a 
 *^ captain " of Carnarvon, now come to keep a
 
 SECOND DAY. 30? 
 
 " public '' at Llanlyfni village^ six miles distant, 
 had made the " young scholar " a present of, 
 " because he had been used to such outlandish 
 drink mayhap at college : " — tea^ be it known 
 even to this day is a sort of rarity in many of the 
 very retired parts of Wales. A soft tapping 
 was heard at the door^ loud enough however to 
 rouse some shaggy dogs sleeping on the hearth, 
 which flew all together to the wicket, before it 
 could be opened by the son. Looking over the 
 half door, though nobody appeared at first, he 
 could see a female shrinking up to the peat-stack 
 at the house end, in terror of the dogs. As 
 she entered, the light (a pith of the large rush 
 soaked in grease, of half a yard^s length, fixed 
 in a kind of vice carried in the hand) glim- 
 mered on a young, a very young female ; her 
 lips and cheeks bloodless, and her features 
 deadly white, in spite of the keen frost-wind ; 
 extreme exhaustion evident in her whole frame. 
 She asked a night's lodging in English, with a 
 voice shrilly infantile with fatigue. Though 
 hospitality be a virtue indigenous to Wales, it 
 is not always found to thrive in the most rug- 
 ged of its solitudes. Old Mr. Morris smoked 
 on, in his huge wicker chair canopying his head, 
 and only vouchsafed a quiet gaze at the poor 
 girl iced up in snow. His wife answered her,
 
 308 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 but it was only with the constant rebuff to 
 ^foreigners' — "Dim Saesnaeg/' at which the girl 
 addressed her in Welsh. Though her face ceased 
 to lower at her, when she spoke the language, 
 she shewed no readiness to grant her request. 
 The stranger fixed her hollow eyes piteously 
 on the noble bank of fire that glowed on the 
 hearth, piled like red hot-cannon balls, far up 
 the reredossy or antique iron back of the chim- 
 ney place, still used in the Welsh farm of older 
 fashion ; a species of winter fire which even 
 England, with her Yule log may envy, formed 
 of the comminuted stone-coal (that burns 
 without smoke) and clay, moulded into balls 
 which glow intensely. The intercession of the 
 son procured her the favour she begged. In- 
 deed, Mrs. Morris herself did not mean to turn 
 her forth when she saw her under her stiffened 
 cloak, clasp and raise her hands, and her fine 
 dark eyes at the same time, on looking at the 
 half-open door, and the horrible bleak waste 
 she must face again, and heard her murmur to 
 herself, '^'^Then I shall die in that snow this 
 night ! " Though almost a child, the fire-light 
 shewed, as she faced it, and some refreshment 
 began to dispel the deathiness of her look, a 
 lofty fair forehead, large expressive eyes, ex- 
 treme fairness joined to dark hair and eyes, alto- 
 gether a style of countenance promising an im-
 
 SECOND DAY. 309 
 
 posing and grand kind of beauty for her 
 womanhood. 
 
 She entreated any kind of work in door or 
 without^ as a permanent place ; but the old lady 
 caught a view of her arms and hands, and they 
 were very white : — indeed the traces of some 
 illness, or extreme trial of her constitution, were 
 visible in that sickly pale, and that deadly lan- 
 gour, which made her appear like one dying, 
 or only keeping, as it were by an effort, from a 
 deadly swoon. 
 
 Now, Mrs. Morris* (or properly speaking 
 Molly, the Welsh mode of designating every 
 housewife, of farm or cot, below the rank of a 
 Squire's lady, who is called Madam,) had a 
 natural aversion to such a hue of hand, 
 because, as she said, it looked " unnatural 
 like," it was not " Welshly,'^ especially for her 
 dairy work, to squeeze butter, cheeses, &c. 
 She preferred that hairy brown tan appearance, 
 and chopped blunt-fingered hand, which be- 
 spoke hard work. She eyed her finely rounded 
 arms, and their digits, with disgust, through 
 her glasses, while her son viewed them with 
 earnestness, if with different impressions. A 
 shake of the head gave token of disapproval, 
 and next morning the wanderer was prepared 
 with the first light to renew her travel, on the
 
 310 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 cause and aim of which she observed an evi- 
 dent anxious secresy. The pity of the son 
 Septimus had procured her every comfort, 
 however, for great indeed is the sway and 
 influence which a ^' son at college " come home 
 to Welshly parents after a few years' polishing, 
 acquires, even where all filial deference re- 
 mains. Hence the singular stranger, betwixt a 
 woman of sorrow and a lost child, perplexing 
 the guessings of her young host, found provided 
 by his order, the same fine fire she had found 
 over night, hot milk, and the " scholar^s '^ own 
 bread (which had been prepared for his visit) 
 on the long oaken board on tressels, which 
 formed the breakfast table. She appeared 
 deeply sensible of his kindness, with such emo- 
 tion at parting as a much younger sister might 
 betray (only checked by her awe of the gentle- 
 man) at quitting a brother for life. The morn- 
 ing was wildly dismal with sleet and a snow- 
 laden sky. The stranger lingered long, looking 
 back often, on her way. Some hours after, she 
 reappeared at the door, and entering presented 
 a little purse to the dame, which she found 
 full of gold, and almost screaming with surprise 
 or alarm, knitted her grey brows at the bearer, 
 and thrust it back into her hand, looking 
 eagerly down at her foot, for the suspected
 
 SECOND DAY. 311 
 
 cloven betrayal of her visiter's nature; but 
 seeing only a pretty enough foot^ she whispered 
 her old man " Mac hi un or Tylwyth Teg/' 
 meaning that it was one of the ^^ fair family^" 
 a species of Fairies of human stature^ sometimes 
 mischievous^ but mostly kind; yet formerly 
 subjects of dread to the twilight traveller of the 
 moss^ or valley depth. Thus we learn from 
 Sir John Wynne (History of the Gwydir 
 Family) that about the middle of the sixteenth 
 century^ one of the " little tyrants " who dis- 
 tracted Wales with their mutual bloody ani- 
 mosities and eternal feuds, having become an 
 outlaw, retired to Ireland, but returned soon 
 secretly, and lived with many followers in the < 
 great woods (like the Duke of Shakespear) in 
 his old neighbourhood, only coming abroad by 
 night, "when,^' says the worthy old knight, 
 " being all drest in green none durst approach 
 them, but if any saw them they ran away, 
 thinking them to be the Tylwyth Teg" 
 
 But the old farmer conceived harder suspi- 
 cions of her, at which the girl bursting into 
 tears, began with almost solemn energy to 
 protest her honesty — that it was her own 
 rightfully; but that, would they take it, and 
 keep as security for her good conduct, she 
 would sen^e them faithfully: — ^^and pray for you
 
 312 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 nightly ! '' added the houseless creature^ while 
 her eye turned to the leaden snow sky, and im- 
 ploringly to her former intercessor, the mild 
 and not inelegant young visitor from college. 
 The " scholar," the tears of the girl, and the 
 purse of gold, prevailed with the old man. The 
 dame would not allow her hand again to touch 
 the mysterious gold, till she had taken down a 
 sprig of dried herb hung at the doorway, St. 
 John's wort, sovereign against witchcraft in 
 Wales, and held in the other hand, while she 
 counted the sum into her right. 
 
 Thus Nest Lewis (that was the name she 
 assumed) became an inmate and a slave in the 
 farm of Cwm Nanttle. Yet she struggled 
 against nature itself (and evident illness) in 
 executing her tasks, such as milking goats and 
 ewes by a lighted rush in a snowy morning, on 
 the cold lake side, and fetching in lambs dropped 
 in a drift, and many harder — and even reco- 
 vered fast her native healthy state. 
 
 Pity, not love, on the return of Septimus to 
 Oxford, kept before his mind's eye his crabbed 
 mother's poor, patient, white slave, eternally, 
 till the next vacation, which seemed longer re- 
 turning than ever before. He, on returning, 
 hardly knew the outcast child again. A light 
 of conscious tenderness, perhaps gratitude, met
 
 SECOND DAY. 313 
 
 him like a sudden soft star espied by us through 
 dull clouds^ where we least looked for it, not 
 thinking it the time for it to rise. A soft round- 
 edness of form, and the luxuriance attendant on 
 that style of personal beauty, joined to fairness, 
 too fair even for exposure and toil to much in- 
 jure, brought to his rather poetical fancy some 
 glorious lily, or other delicate yet gorgeous 
 flower, that he had left well nigh bowed to the 
 ground by storm, and pining for better soil, 
 revived erect and glistening white brilliance, oi* 
 waving "rosy red" in the eye of the sun. 
 
 The home sojourn of Septimus was very long, 
 for, to the astonishment of all the neighbours, 
 he resolved to give up a fellowship in prospect 
 and become a farmer. To be brief, a passion, 
 doubtless mutual as it was violent, grew be- 
 tween the stranger servant and her young 
 master, kept secret till after the deaths of both 
 the old people, which happened nearly together. 
 Then Septimus, having received home a wi- 
 dowed sister who was much attached to him, 
 avowed his honourable intentions. But when 
 Nest^s situation became thus anomalous, be- 
 tween servant and wife intended, and he grew 
 eager to give her a sweeter, defined character, 
 in his house, and his sister, too, seconded his 
 entreaty, for the humble beauty had a pride or 
 
 VOL. I. p
 
 314 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 dignity very striking^ that ^^ would not unsought 
 be won/' to the astonishment of both^ her 
 reluctance and her grief (for she grew sad and 
 pale and anxious) grew in proportion to their 
 earnestness. In truth^an unaccountable trouble^, 
 a constraint^ and frequent concealed tears start- 
 ing^ and a sudden knit of brow_, as if from some 
 sudden pain shooting across the heart, which had 
 been lulled to sleep by his endearments, had poi- 
 soned all their otherwise delicious intercourse. 
 For in her state of ruthless servitude, it had 
 been very delightful to him, by his influence 
 with his parents, and his bribes to farm ser- 
 vants, to relieve her of almost all her severer 
 tasks ; doubly delightful to her to frequently 
 learn by whose tender interposition she was so 
 relieved, who it was that made the churlish 
 mistress strangely kind, and the idle servant 
 strangely willing to lend a helping hand. 
 
 To what singularity of fate or fortune could 
 it be owing, that a loving and beloved young 
 woman, of impassioned character, with no 
 visible bar to happiness, resisted resolutely 
 that happiness proffered by the object of her 
 love, at once incurring and inflicting misery, 
 without an end that could be conjectured? 
 Yet, this was long the sad embarrassed state 
 of the young pair. She would betray the ut-
 
 SECOND DAY. 315 
 
 most devotedness of fond attachment ; her 
 heart rested on his heart, her eye on his eye, 
 secretly ; his shortest absence was evident trou- 
 ble and sadness to her; his return a rest and 
 recomforting that restored her to herself. Her 
 mind masculine^, and spirit lofty, those quali- 
 ties but showed themselves in a charming de- 
 corum, and propriety of thought and action. 
 Her education Septimus had himself under- 
 taken, and found Love a most apt learner. 
 The rustic Eloisa loved learning for the sake of 
 the teacher. The young man^s means were 
 ample, for the mode of life in these secluded 
 farms is very inexpensive. Nothing seemed 
 more capable of perfect bliss than their lot, and 
 nothing could be more miserable. This was the 
 extraordinary round of their intercourse. Her 
 birth, its place, her family, she had long since 
 stipulated to be allowed to bury in eternal si- 
 lence as a condition of her stay, after the death 
 of the old mistress. She could not bear to tell 
 him the truth, or to impose on him a falsehood. 
 She only offered by any oath to assure him 
 that she was not guilty of any legal crime for 
 which she had become an outcast. With all 
 his confidence, this mystery of course was 
 painful. Her passion, too powerful to be 
 doubted by him, her trembling anxieties for his
 
 316 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 health, would force him to regard her refusals 
 as the coyness of virgin coquetry, playing with 
 a heart she knew her own ; he would then re- 
 new his eager suit, laugh at her rejection, grow 
 sad, then furious at her repeating it with tears, 
 and evident self-violence of resolve. His fury 
 produced faintings, hysterics, despair on her 
 part ; when she revived, remorse on his. What 
 could he do ? He even promised to never re- 
 new the agitating question. That tender ques- 
 tion, what all lifers future hung on, to be never 
 put again ! It was impossible to keep such a 
 promise ; nay, she herself would not let him 
 keep it, when she saw how miserable he was, 
 while thus restraining himself. Then she would 
 encourage her first love, her benefactor, her 
 generous protector, by still freer, fonder indul- 
 gences, within the pale of modesty, to vent his 
 full heart, and to once more propose what was 
 so natural, so necessary even to her own good 
 fame ; for all saw she was no more a servant, 
 and yet she was not, nor about to be a wife. 
 And he was encouraged, and again would 
 talk of the day, the ring ; and an inexplicable 
 mixed fire and darkness would come to her too 
 expressive eye at once ; a smile like a sunflash, 
 a hot cheek, and a death- paleness, and a faint- 
 ness of some deep dark emotion, all followed
 
 SECOND DAY. 317 
 
 rapidly. Then she at last did consent^ named 
 a distant day ; he was all transport, ran to tell 
 his ^^ sister Winny^^ the glad news. But ere it 
 came, the struggle within her had made her ill ; 
 she confessed she had but promised because she 
 " could not, could not bear to refuse ; could not 
 bear his anger under that refusal ; but, indeed, 
 indeed, she could not ; oh, never could be his ! 
 Perhaps she might die soon, and her secret 
 with her ; if it were possible, and the parson 
 would permit, she would have her heart taken 
 out and kept in her Septy^s chamber, at least till 
 he should marry;" thus she told his sister. "For 
 her body, they might put it anywhere ; in Lyn 
 Nan tie pool if they would ; she regarded it not, 
 and there was nobody to regard it but him ; he 
 had her heart, her heart, her soul, if it was not 
 sin to say it, till it went back to God, or — ^^ 
 Her vehement grief drew tears from the good 
 sister, but her secret never transpired in her 
 most extreme agitations. 
 
 This reiterated refusal, of course, convinced 
 Septimus that coquetry had no share in pro- 
 ducing it. On the contrary, it grew manifest 
 that the unhappy girl was herself sinking fast 
 into a profound melancholy, under the misery of 
 her own compelled rejection of his hand. What- 
 ever might be the nature of that compulsion, 
 p 3
 
 318 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 the tantalizing torment of this state of baffled 
 passion and perpetual anxious thinkings in ex- 
 ploring the dark secret of her bosom^ at last 
 affected the health of the sensitive young man 
 very visibly. '^ He will not be very long after 
 his parents, I 'm thinking/' was the remark of a 
 neighbour overheard by Nest. She knew the 
 cause of his declining state^ and started at 
 herself as if awaking from a horrid dream, in 
 which she had been near murdering the object 
 of her most intense gratitude and doating. She 
 flew to him, forgetting in that new terrible 
 compunction, whatever other feelings had so 
 long kept her from his arms, and without even 
 his renewed entreaty, all at once named the 
 day ! for fancy exaggerated his paleness, his 
 sunkenness of eye, and sickly dejection of ap- 
 pearance, as she darted her eager eyes explor- 
 ing into his eyes, and scrutinized his features 
 with all the anxiety of the fondest mother ex- 
 amining the face of her sick child, from which 
 she has been parted awhile, intensely curious 
 to ascertain what change it may exhibit ; and 
 an early day seemed the actual condition of her 
 Septy's hfe. 
 
 Once more exhilarated to extasy, the long- 
 sullen lover wept for joy. TJiis was her own 
 free proposal; noiv he no longer doubted of
 
 SECOND DAY. 319 
 
 happiness, the romantic happiness of caUing 
 the "white stranger," as the neighbours had 
 baptized her from her first singular paUid look, 
 the wife of his bosom. 
 
 A very short and trite conversation that 
 passed one fine twilight, as they walked by the 
 little lake, took powerful effect on the myste- 
 rious mind of the young bride elect. 
 
 " I wonder, will your sister Winny ever 
 marry again ?'^ she observed. 
 
 " No, I hope not,^' he replied. 
 
 ^^ Hope not ! why ? '^ 
 
 '^Because she's a delicate-minded woman, 
 and no coarse-minded man would make her • 
 happy, and none but such marry widows." 
 
 " Good God ! are you in earnest ? '^ said his 
 mistress, turning pale as death. 
 
 " Certainly ; can pure love exist toward an 
 impure object ? Now, every widow is in some 
 sense impure ; her bloom of heart is gone ; her 
 bud of beauty has blown forth in the eye of 
 another — is she not another's leavings ? I 
 wonder, my sweet girl, how you could ask me 
 if I was in earnest ! Is there nothing in that 
 gloss of first feelings, what shall we call it ? 
 that virgin bloom of the whole lovely human 
 fruit ? tJds that you have kept so long for me — 
 for me, my precious ! '' said the fastidious Sep-
 
 320 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 timus^ proudly eyeing the averted smooth- 
 cheeked beauty, now all crimson, which he 
 kissed. " Is there nothing in all this, think 
 you? Is it as well dulled and palled over or 
 away? Come, come, confess you wouldn't 
 bear to offer your Septy even this sweet face 
 and fine form, had you no longer its freshest 
 graces to offer too ! Would you now ? No, 
 no, let poor Winny live for her little ones, not 
 for a second husband 1" 
 
 ^^ And what have / to live for ? ^' murmured 
 Nest, as if unconsciously almost aloud. 
 
 ^^ First love or none," continued the poetical 
 lover, ^^ for me ! And as to person, it ^s mon- 
 strous to be indifferent on that head when mar- 
 riage is the question — children, too — eternal 
 remembrancers — oh, it 's gross ! You might 
 as well think of a return of yonder rain-drops, 
 now twinkling on these oak-boughs that shelter 
 us, after they ^ve run away in that brook which 
 turns the mill yonder, to their high place shin- 
 ing on the golden green leaves in this sunny 
 shower, as talk about the raptures of young 
 love after the devotion of love to wedlock ! 
 That water 's a useful water, and an admirable, 
 nay, far more so than when darting its little 
 rainbow-prisms in your eyes and mine, as it 's 
 doing now ; but I don^t look at it usefully roll-
 
 SECOND DAY. 321 
 
 ing there discoloured^ as I do at those trembling 
 liquid diamonds. Good God ! are you ill^ faint?'^ 
 
 Nest was in a suppressed agony of tear s^ and 
 this burst of his romantic delicacy of nature, 
 with its little flash of poetry, was^ trifling as it 
 seemed, the ground of renewed misery to him. 
 After excusing as she could this sudden emo- 
 tion^ she next morning astonished his sister 
 with another refusal of his hand, though the 
 ring was bought, and all in readiness for their 
 nuptials. 
 
 But the sisterly feeling of her friend now 
 vented itself on the wretched girl in such un- 
 measured terms of reproach; she painted the 
 ingratitude of her conduct in such colours, 
 calling her the wanton murderess of her bro- 
 ther's peace, prospects, and life; that Nest, 
 smiling pleased assent through all her tears and 
 agony, to every word her reviler uttered of the 
 merits of her lover, and the obligations she 
 owed him, at last threw herself on her neck. 
 The easily-softened sister returned her embrace, 
 and altered her tone to tender reproach and soli- 
 citations for her brother. Then it was that Nest 
 seemed to resolve an end to that agony of de- 
 liberative doubt which had marked her looks 
 and actions. She was of tall stature, and when 
 she erected herself, and held her friend's hands
 
 322 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 both in her own trembhng ones^, looking in- 
 tensely in her face^ Winny felt an awe of ex- 
 pectation of what was to follow^ and her first 
 words were of a nature to further arouse that 
 feeling. '' Can you be secret ?" she said with 
 a wild solemnity, " will jou be secret as guilty 
 as death and the grave ? — will you swear to be ? 
 For sooner I could meet the crudest death 
 possible^ death in any form, most miserable 
 death ! oh^ far sooner than I could your bro- 
 ther's open face ever, ever again, if you should 
 ever tell him what I am now going, what I 
 must now tell you !'^ The sister pledged her- 
 self to secresy ; she continued, " Would to God 
 I had been a corpse, a skeleton in the earth, 
 buried as soon as I had breathed, a fifteen 
 years' lodger in the waste ground of the church 
 back, instead of in this wicked world, when I 
 first came wandering to Pen y Coed, to stand as 
 I have done between my dear, dear Septimus — 
 why do I call him mine ? — and virtuous virgins 
 that he might have loved but for me ; to cut 
 him off from honest, happy wedlock ! /, who 
 have only a poor, worthless, bleeding, broken 
 heart to give him ! not innocence, not what he 
 deserves and desires ! But, thank God ! I 
 have not deceived him, nor will not ! No,
 
 SECOND DAY. 323 
 
 Winny vach / * I cannot, I cannot be his ; I 
 cannot bear to either deceive or undeceive the 
 dear, generous lad !" And then she covered 
 her face with both her hands, adding in hollow 
 voice — " I am a mother !" 
 
 The substance of this confession so tortur- 
 ingly wrung from her was, that she had been 
 at the age of fourteen seduced by a son of a 
 neighbouring man of fortune — that according to 
 her own suspicion her own parents were ac- 
 tually conniving at her ruin, induced by large 
 gifts to allow solitary meetings between her and 
 him — that on the occasion of that event which 
 betrayed her disgrace, she revolved in her mind 
 not only the present distress but an old obloquy 
 for the crime of murder, under which she said 
 her family name had suffered time immemorial 
 — that, wrought up to a fearful pitch of wild 
 desperate feeling, she rose from bed at mid- 
 night, while her infant was yet but a few days 
 old, resolved to renounce name, birthplace, and 
 family for ever, and re-commence existence as it 
 were, in the most distant place her weakness 
 might reach, or find a grave in the attempt. 
 
 * A diminutive epithet of endearment, in constant use 
 among the rustic Welsh, applied to females, as bach is to the 
 male persons. Both mean literally "little." Both are sounded 
 without the e, exactly as the Scotch sound ** Loch," a lake.
 
 324 THE MOUNTAIN-DECAMERON. 
 
 Her clothes cast on a swoln tide river's bank 
 for the purpose of preventing pursuit, she left 
 near the house^ and a purse she had stooped to 
 beg of her seducer for the adventure she medi- 
 tated, supplied her wants as well as gave surety 
 to her churlish employer at last, for her good 
 conduct. The age of the seducer (double her 
 own) gave him all the advantage of art to work 
 on the simplicity and vanity of the rustic child 
 thus betrayed to him. Connecting in her 
 thoughts the suspected crime of her parents, 
 with that imputed proneness to guilt of her fa- 
 mily — she resolved to never more bear its 
 name, or acknowledge its affinity, and acted on 
 this resolve till this fatal passion compelled the 
 revealment of herself. As no inquiries after 
 her had been made, to any one's knowledge^ it 
 seemed probable that she was given up for 
 drowned by her relatives in the county of 
 , where she was born. Such a reso- 
 lution, conceived and executed by a mere child 
 of hardly fifteen years, evinced a spirit capable 
 of great actions in future — good or ill. 
 
 END OF VOL. I. 
 
 J. B. NICHOLS AND SON, 25, PARLIAMENT STREET. 
 
 \^
 
 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS-URBANA 
 
 3 0112 042260619 
 
 
 
 
 li'C 
 
 ';:^ 
 
 ;'.';;')ij<'^';';.:;!^vu;illii;j!(j;.- 
 
 i^S'' f iaiillilili! i i; 
 
 Sll 
 
 :hiiii[iiiliiiwj