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+Project Gutenberg's The Making of William Edwards, by Mrs. G. Linnaeus Banks
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Making of William Edwards
+       or The Story of the Bridge of Beauty
+
+Author: Mrs. G. Linnaeus Banks
+
+Release Date: December 5, 2011 [EBook #38212]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MAKING OF WILLIAM EDWARDS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Chris Curnow, Lindy Walsh, Martin Pettit and
+the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE MAKING OF WILLIAM EDWARDS
+
+[Illustration:
+
+Yours Faithfully
+Isabella Banks]
+
+
+
+
+PUBLISHER'S NOTE TO POPULAR EDITION
+
+
+This book appeared originally as 'The Bridge of Beauty.' But on its
+re-issue in popular form it has been thought well to indicate in the new
+title the purport of the story.
+
+[Illustration: THE SEARCH FOR THE MISSING FARMER.
+
+_Frontispiece._] [_See page 16._]
+
+
+
+
+THE MAKING OF WILLIAM EDWARDS
+
+OR
+
+_THE STORY OF THE BRIDGE OF BEAUTY_
+
+
+BY
+MRS. G. LINNĈUS BANKS
+
+AUTHOR OF 'GOD'S PROVIDENCE HOUSE' 'THE MANCHESTER MAN'
+'IN HIS OWN HAND' ETC. ETC.
+
+
+_WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY W. DEWAR_
+
+
+SECOND EDITION
+
+
+LONDON:
+ANDREW MELROSE
+16 PILGRIM STREET, E.C.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+CHAP.                                   PAGE
+
+    I. A THUNDERSTORM                     13
+
+   II. WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN               25
+
+  III. A BOY'S WILL                       36
+
+   IV. PAYING THE RENT                    46
+
+    V. THE NEW INMATE                     57
+
+   VI. LOST                               70
+
+  VII. THE YOUNG PLAGUE                   83
+
+ VIII. THE DAY OF SMALL THINGS            95
+
+   IX. THE BAFFLED AGENT                 105
+
+    X. FRIENDS AND BROTHERS              118
+
+   XI. A MEMORABLE ENCOUNTER             129
+
+  XII. CAERPHILLY CASTLE                 141
+
+ XIII. MAN PROPOSES                      152
+
+  XIV. WHERE IS EVAN?                    162
+
+   XV. A STOP-GAP                        179
+
+  XVI. DISCOVERIES                       193
+
+ XVII. PROPER TOOLS                      207
+
+XVIII. IN THE GRIP OF A STRONG HAND      219
+
+  XIX. WITH GRANDFATHER'S GOLD           232
+
+   XX. IN THE NICK OF TIME               249
+
+  XXI. THE FINGER OF GOD                 264
+
+ XXII. A BLIND INSTRUCTOR                280
+
+XXIII. BRIDGE-BUILDING                   298
+
+ XXIV. PONT-Y-PRIDD                      313
+
+POSTSCRIPT                               333
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
+
+                                                           PAGE
+
+THE SEARCH FOR THE MISSING FARMER               _Frontispiece._
+
+THE RIDERLESS HORSE FOUND ITS WAY HOME                       17
+
+MOUNTED ON THE LOW WALL, ON HIS WAY TO EVAN'S SHOULDERS      67
+
+LYING IN THE MIDST OF THE HOARY CIRCLE OF GREY STONES        79
+
+'SO THAT IS HOW YOU PROPOSE TO CARRY ON YOUR FARM?'
+HE SAID, WITH A SNEER                                       107
+
+HE TURNED AND SHOOK HIS WHIP-HAND AT THE CHILD              111
+
+THERE WAS SOMETHING RATHER MYSTERIOUS ABOUT HER CARGO       165
+
+'YOUR RENT WILL BE ADVANCED TEN POUNDS PER ANNUM
+AFTER THIS DATE,' HE SAID                                   175
+
+HE FOUND MR. MORRIS SEATED AT THE TABLE AS WELL AS
+THE VICAR                                                   243
+
+LONG-LOST EVAN HAD COME BACK                                253
+
+BLINDED BY PASSION, HE SPURRED HIS HORSE TO THE
+UNCERTAIN FORD                                              269
+
+ELAINE PARRY                                                293
+
+ONLY HIS WIFE CAN ENTER INTO HIS FEELINGS, AND
+ALLEVIATE HIS BITTER HUMILIATION                            325
+
+THE BRIDGE OF BEAUTY, 1755                                  331
+
+
+[Illustration: CAERPHILLY CASTLE.]
+
+
+
+
+THE MAKING OF WILLIAM EDWARDS.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+A THUNDERSTORM.
+
+
+It was a sad day for Mrs. Edwards, of Eglwysilan,[1] when her well-loved
+husband, on his return from Llantrissant market one sultry Friday in the
+autumn of 1721, in attempting to cross the River Taff, failed to observe
+its rising waters, missed the ford, and was carried down the stream, a
+drowning man.
+
+Only that morning he had driven a goat and a score of sheep across in
+safety, the sheep following their agile and sure-footed leader, as he
+sprang from one to another of the out-cropping masses of rock, which,
+scattered in mid-stream, served alike as stepping-stones and as
+indications when the river was fordable, as it generally was in a dry
+summer.
+
+But the Taff, born in a marsh, and running through a deep vale, is given
+to rise as swiftly as the traditional Welshman's temper. Many are its
+seen and unseen feeders among the mountain steeps; and, although there
+had been but a light passing shower in sheltered hill-side Llantrissant
+that day, farther north a heavy thunderstorm had burst in a deluge over
+bogs and hills; and down from countless rills and rivulets the waters
+had come flashing in leaps and bounds, to swell the tribute brooks and
+rivers alike bore to the Taff as vassals to a sovereign.
+
+William Edwards was as steady a man as any farmer in Glamorganshire, but
+whenever a group of them got together, at fair or market, there great
+pitchers of _cwrw da_[2] were certain to be also, either to cement
+friendship or to clinch a bargain, and the beverage was uncommonly
+heady.
+
+Now bargaining was a long and thirsty process, and, although he was
+thrifty and the ale was dear, when Edwards had completed the sale of
+goat and sheep to his satisfaction, he had imbibed a fair share of the
+common beverage; not, however, so much as to prevent other huckstering
+and bargaining on account of his wife. The stockings knitted on the farm
+had to be sold, or bartered for needles, pins, tapes, or shoe-latchets;
+he had to purchase a sieve, a supply of soap and candles, a pair of
+Sunday shoes for his little girl, and a couple of tin cans.
+
+By the time these were thrust into his saddle-bags, the sieve and
+tinware secured to the pommel of his saddle so as to balance each other
+above the bags, and a final draught of _cwrw_ swallowed as a refresher
+for his journey, the afternoon had slipped nearly away, and with it one
+or two impatient neighbours on whom he had depended for company on the
+rough, circuitous road over the mountain ridge to the fords.
+
+Rough road indeed it was, little better than a beaten track worn by men
+and beasts constrained to pass that way; a road unsought except in dry
+weather, a rugged descent from Llantrissant to the ford of the Rhonda,
+and then up and down again, with stones and tree-roots lying in wait to
+trip unwary feet; for at that period the picturesque Vale of Taff was
+thickly wooded and scantily populated, and the roads were little better
+than deep gullies or natural stairways.
+
+His sturdy Welsh pony, however, was a thorough mountaineer, and, left to
+himself, jogged along without stumbling or straying, whatever the hour
+or the road. He took to the water and crossed the ford of the swollen
+Rhonda safely enough, although twilight was falling; but the evening
+shadows had deepened with every mile they trod, and grew heavier as they
+descended towards the larger river, with darkening woods on either hand,
+for there they rode through a veil of blinding mist.
+
+The mist had been gathering and the water rising rapidly, when Owen
+Griffith, one of his neighbours, who had prudently quitted the market
+three-quarters of an hour earlier than Edwards, finding the river
+evidently on the rise, had deemed it only wise to trust his pony's
+sagacity to find a trustworthy ford rather than depend on his own
+eyesight.
+
+It was quite a matter for after conjecture, but it was always supposed
+that the sagacious animal Edwards bestrode had grown restive and refused
+to take the unsafe crossing, and that he,--a man doggedly obstinate and
+wise in his own conceit,--unable to discern a reason for his faithful
+beast's rebellion, had forcibly compelled the reluctant animal to
+attempt the ford in spite of its resistance, as shown by hoof-marks
+beaten in upon the bank.
+
+Be that as it may, the riderless horse found its way home to the
+woodside farm on Eglwysilan Mountain, wet, foaming, and panting; the
+saddle and saddle-bags, drenched with discoloured water, telling all too
+surely that the uneasily watching wife was a widow, her four children
+fatherless. In such moments the mind always grasps at the worst
+suggestion.
+
+The distracted woman rushed shrieking to her nearest neighbour. Her
+awakened boys called after her, but she heard them not.
+
+The alarm spread. In an incredibly short space of time, considering how
+far apart lay the farms, and how few were the cottage homes, a score or
+two of half-dressed men and barefooted women were running or riding to
+the rescue, if such were possible. And wherever was practicable path or
+foothold, lanthorns were flashing along the steep and densely wooded
+banks upon the swiftly running river; but though it was seen where the
+poor horse had contrived to scramble up the bank, there was no sign of
+him they sought so anxiously.
+
+[Illustration: THE RIDERLESS HORSE FOUND ITS WAY HOME.--_See page 16._]
+
+The more fortunate beast had had a narrow escape.
+
+Not forty yards ahead the chafing Rhonda came leaping and foaming to the
+deathly embrace of the Taff, and in the swirl of the confluent waters
+all hope was lost.
+
+Yet still the despairing widow urged the wearied explorers on; and moved
+by her piteous entreaties, Owen Griffith, their near neighbour, declared
+he would not give up the search until the farmer was found, dead or
+alive, if he had to go as far as Cardiff to find him. The man was ill at
+ease, feeling as if a little more urgency on his part might have drawn
+Edwards away from the market in time for safety.
+
+His determination arrested the steps of several others who were on the
+point of turning back, and they joined him readily, but only on the
+condition that Mrs. Edwards should return home with the rest of the
+women, and leave the search to them. 'You will be best at home, look
+you! Women have no business here!' said they, unnerved by her white face
+and stifled sobbing.
+
+'Yes, yes, Jane,' urged the women. 'Think you of your children, do; and
+come back. It's crying in the dark, and all alone they will be, yes
+indeed!'
+
+And moved by the picture of her desolate children in their affright and
+grief, the sorrowing and agitated mother was drawn homewards, by the
+strong cords of maternal affection, to clasp them in her arms, and
+stifle her own anguish in attempts to impart the comfort she could not
+yet take to her own stricken heart.
+
+She was a religious woman, with a simple, unquestioning faith in the
+wisdom and love of her Heavenly Father; and who shall say the effort
+held for her no healing balm?
+
+If she wept, she also prayed; and although two of her children, William,
+not yet a three years boy, and Jonet, a girl of four, were too young to
+enter into the depths of her grief, or comprehend her prayers, David and
+Rhys,[3] respectively nine and twelve, were old enough to understand,
+and to feel how disastrous a calamity had fallen upon them unawares.
+
+Before midnight the three youngest had cried themselves to sleep. Only
+Rhys remained, with his arms around his mother's neck, to share her
+terrible night-watch, and wait for what day might bring; his overflowing
+young heart swelling with unexpressed resolves to be her shield and
+protector when he should grow a man.
+
+In the grey of the morning Owen Griffith and his helpers came upon what
+they sought a few miles below Treforest, on the eastern bank of the
+river, flung ashore like a weed by the inflowing current of the Rhonda,
+and left there by the rapid subsidence of the temporary spate. Soberly
+and reverently they laid it on an extemporised litter of boughs and
+reeds, covering the face with Owen's coat, and slowly re-trod the miles
+to lay the disfigured dead down on the bed from which a hearty man had
+risen the preceding morn.
+
+There is no antidote to inconsolable grief like active employment, work
+which exercises hand and brain and cannot be set aside. Such is the
+daily work on a farm; and though kindly neighbours had taken care of
+the poor horse and its burden, had dressed the younger children, and
+volunteered assistance in other small household matters, neither the
+cows nor the goats would submit to be milked by strange hands.
+
+Mrs. Edwards had, fortunately, no time to indulge in grief. She was a
+woman of determined energy and practical piety; and after the first
+overwhelming outburst of natural emotion, turned to her ordinary duties
+as if awakened to the consciousness that all the care and responsibility
+of farm and family rested on her individual shoulders.
+
+Dashing the tears from her eyes, she snatched up a milking-stool and
+pail, and was off up the hill-side, Rhys darting after her with a
+smaller stool and pail to milk the she-goats, not for the first time,
+but for the first time voluntarily. His initiatory lessons had been
+taken that summer, with his father standing over him to keep the
+refractory in order, whether biped or quadruped.
+
+He had not taken kindly to the task at the time, having all a boy's
+fondness for play, and would rather have gone bird-nesting than
+goat-milking. But _now_ that his father was gone--so suddenly taken from
+them--he, too, seemed to feel as if new duties devolved on him, and
+that, boy though he was, he must aim at the work of a man, and spare his
+widowed mother all he could.
+
+The idea was scarcely spontaneous. He had overheard a knot of gossips
+lamenting that Farmer Edwards had not left a son old enough to take his
+place on the farm, and help his mother to rear the younger ones as in
+duty bound. And he had straightway resolved to prove the gossips in the
+wrong.
+
+'If I am not old enough to take my father's place, I am old enough to do
+my duty, and I shall get older and stronger every year. They shall see
+what I can do to help mother; and as for my brothers and sister, am I
+not the eldest, and ten whole years older than William? Sure I can take
+care of them--at least I can try.'
+
+If this was not absolutely the boy's colloquy, it comes near enough to
+its spirit. There was something of the father's masterfulness in Rhys,
+and, directed to noble purposes, it might serve the widow in good stead.
+And noble purpose may be shown in small things as in great; indeed, is
+stronger in the lesser, where it makes no show, than in great deeds,
+which make a parade and attract applause. The only danger with Rhys was
+that, self-inflated, he might develop an obtrusively dominant will that
+should override his better qualities. At present his sole desire was to
+relieve his overburdened mother, and protect his sister and brothers--a
+worthy and noble aim for a boy of his age.
+
+But a boy reared on a small farm in those primitive days was not the
+helpless creature progress and modern manners have manufactured between
+them. Very primitive indeed was Welsh farming in the last century,
+primitive as the farms themselves. But no child of seven or eight was
+too young for work of some kind or other, whether reared in the
+labourer's windowless hut or on the farmer's own wide hearth. If only
+stone-picking, weeding, or rook-scaring, there was always something to
+be done, something to keep active and restless boys and girls out of
+mischief before they were old enough to drive the cows to pasture, or
+assist shepherd and husbandman.
+
+Of school-going there was little enough; even dame-schools were as
+scarce in wild Wales as in rural England; but there was generally a
+substitute by the fireside, and the man who could not read was far less
+common in the little Principality than in the larger kingdom.
+
+Still more scarce was the woman or man who could not knit. When a child
+was six years old, it was time to put knitting-pins into the little
+fingers to learn the simple stitch. And wander where you would, over the
+mountains or along the rough roads, you were sure to meet man or maid,
+on horseback or on foot, stocking-knitting with mechanical precision.
+
+In the long winter evenings, when the only illumination was from the
+culm fire, the solitary candle, or homemade rushlight, knitting and
+spinning filled up usefully the darkened hours. And perchance then the
+big Welsh Bible Dr. Parry had provided for his countrymen a century
+before would be brought out and laid on the table close to the solitary
+candle, to be read aloud or spelled out by the growing boy or girl,
+under paternal instruction. On the Sabbath this was surely so.
+
+Under such training it was clear that Rhys at twelve years of age would
+be more capable and practically helpful to his mother than a modern
+farmer's son, who sees the farm only in the holidays, or out of school
+hours, who handles tennis or cricket bat instead of spade and
+pitchfork, and never did a day's hard work in his young life.
+
+When Rhys bravely resolved to work like a man, he knew what lay before
+him to do and to learn. Farming on a thin, unproductive stratum of soil
+in a mountain land is no child's play.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] Pronounced Egloois-ilian.
+
+[2] _Cwrw da_, good ale. The _w_ has the sound of _oo_; thus _cooroo_.
+
+[3] Rhys, pronounced Rees.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN.
+
+
+Is there any record of a catastrophe so great or appalling that it could
+not possibly have been worse?
+
+In the first hours of her sudden bereavement, Mrs. Edwards felt as if an
+overwhelming flood of desolation had swept over her, and left her and
+her orphans helpless and hopeless. Not that her husband had been the
+most active spirit on the farm, but she was in no condition to reason or
+to weigh probabilities. She had not been wont to rely on him for advice
+or action, but in losing him she felt as if all was lost.
+
+An apparently small matter roused her to the consciousness that there
+were depths of misery into which she had not been plunged, and that even
+out of her affliction she had cause to thank God for sparing a double
+blow.
+
+When the drowned man had been discovered, he had been bruised and beaten
+against rocks and stones until his grey frieze coat was torn into shreds
+and tatters. But it was afterwards found that the old stocking-foot he
+carried as a money bag had been securely buttoned up in his breeches
+pocket, and the produce of his sales at the Friday's market was there
+intact in hard coin.
+
+In the extremity of her grief for her one great loss she had overlooked
+the probability of the smaller. Not till the saturated bag was handed to
+her unopened did she realise what might have been.
+
+As she poured the gold and silver out on her lap, she clasped her hands
+and fervently thanked God that in His wrath He had remembered mercy.
+
+'I had forgotten that the sheep and goat had been sold to make up the
+half-year's rent. Yes, indeed I had. And what would become of the farm
+and the poor children if the rent could not be paid? Pryse, the agent,
+would turn us out for a better tenant than a poor widow, look you! But
+he shall see what a woman can do. The good God has not quite forsaken
+us.'
+
+She wept again at the thought, and little William and Jonet having drawn
+close to her side questioning her with innocent eyes and tongues, she
+clasped them both in a close embrace, and, without trusting herself to
+answer, rose from her wooden stool and carried the recovered coin to a
+safe hiding-place in the big chest, her sad heart much lightened of its
+load.
+
+Barefooted David, who was still petticoated--his nine years bringing no
+title to the dignity of week-day shoes or breeches,--ran with all speed
+in search of Rhys, to carry the news that a bag of money had been found
+in his father's pocket, and that his mother was crying over it.
+
+Rhys was just then feeding the pigs in a stone trough, placed where
+they were walled in like sheep in a fold. He almost dropped the pail he
+was emptying, he turned round so sharply.
+
+'Crying? What for?'
+
+''Deed, I think it was about being turned out of the farm,' answered
+Davy, who had caught the words imperfectly, as he hurried out at the
+doorway.
+
+Rhys looked aghast. What became of his heroic resolution to work for his
+brothers and sister if they left the farm?
+
+'Turned out of the farm?' he echoed incredulously. Had not his father
+and grandfather been born upon it? It would be like tearing up an oak
+tree by the roots.
+
+''Deed, and she said it,' replied David, as if injured by the doubt.
+
+Down went the empty pail on the stones, and into the house strode Rhys,
+alternately red and white with excitement.
+
+He could scarcely get the words out, they seemed to choke him. 'Davy
+says,' he began with a gasp, 'that we are to leave the farm'--he could
+not bring himself to say 'be turned out.'
+
+'Nay, Rhys, not now I have all the money for the rent, thank God! If
+that had been lost in the river, I cannot tell what might have happened.
+There would be no chance of selling cows or pigs, or the oats, or
+anything before the rent-day, and Mr. Pryse would not wait an hour. "Out
+you go!" would be his word. "There's a man will give ten guineas more
+rent for it, and keep the land in better condition." Yes, look you, he
+has been saying that these three years, and now it's he will be for
+saying a woman will not be able to keep the hundred acres and pay my
+lord his forty pounds. It's poor land, so much rock and bog and wood,
+and he knows it, so much barren hill-side, scarcely fit to pasture the
+few sheep and goats. Yes, 'deed it will take hard work to make the farm
+pay now the husbandman is gone. Ah, yes, yes! We have had a terrible
+loss, Rhys, _fach_.'[4]
+
+As she spoke the last words the poor widow's tears gushed forth again,
+and would not be restrained. The flowers she was strewing over the
+sheet-covered form of her dead fell to the floor, and she dropped on her
+knees beside the bed, where it was her mournful duty to watch, and hid
+her face with her hands as if to conceal the passion of grief she could
+no longer control.
+
+Rhys was sobbing too, though he strove against it in his effort to be
+manly. His arm went round her heaving shoulders with an unstudied air of
+natural protection, and in a broken voice he begged her to be calm. Not
+that he was by any means calm himself, but he was feeling early the need
+for self-restraint.
+
+'Don't, mother, don't,' he murmured; 'you will be making yourself ill,
+and then who will mind the farm or the children? I will be a good steady
+boy, and will work as hard almost as a man. You shall not miss father
+more than I can help, look you. And sure we have a terrible loss; but,
+mother dear, it might be worse if we did lose the farm and all, as Davy
+did say. You are a good farmer, so Owen Griffith do say, and you will be
+teaching me.'
+
+'Yes, indeed, please God, and you shall be a good farmer too, Rhys,'
+sobbed she, drying her eyes on her long check apron, and giving him a
+look of profound trust and loving motherhood, whilst he drew himself up
+with a renewed sense of importance.
+
+At that moment a figure darkened the bedroom doorway. In stepped a
+fresh-looking young woman with bare legs and feet, short petticoats of
+striped flannel, a dark blue woollen cloak, and a man's tall hat worn
+over a plain linen cap, white as a snowdrop, though the stray locks
+beneath it might have been more orderly had looking-glasses been more
+common. She had a bundle on her left arm, a stocking she was knitting in
+her hand, whilst little Willie held her fast by the other, and Jonet
+clung to her cloak.
+
+'Ah, Ales,[5] is that you?' burst from Mrs. Edwards with an evident gasp
+of relief. 'You was not expected back so soon. Had you heard of our
+loss? Is your poor mother well again?'
+
+'Not quite well, but better, look you. She can sit up, and Mary may
+manage to do for her now, perhaps.' There was a dubious tone in the
+'perhaps,' but she went on to say, 'Mother would not let me stay when
+she heard of your great trouble, after you was so kind as to let me go
+away to nurse her. It was not right I should stay at Caerphilly when you
+was being left all alone by yourself, with nobody to keep watch with
+you or to help at all;' and she passed into the kitchen as she spoke.
+
+'Yes, _I'm_ here, Ales,' thrust in Rhys, as he followed. 'I shall help
+mother now; yes, indeed!'
+
+'You?' ejaculated Ales incredulously, whilst divesting herself of
+bundle, cloak, etc. 'Help's a little word and soon said, but it's not
+much more than the saying we will be getting from you, Rhys. You never
+was fond of work, whatever!'
+
+Rhys pulled himself up as if insulted. 'You shall see,' he said loftily,
+and quitted the kitchen, where Mrs. Griffith was paring turnips for
+dinner, his chin in the air. And not another word did he vouchsafe to
+the young woman, his mother's hired servant. He might, by his manner,
+have expected her to understand his altered position and good resolution
+intuitively, but she only knew him as a lad with more liking for play
+than work, and expected no more from the present than from the past.
+Nay, perhaps less, now there was no father to drive him to his daily
+tasks and thrash him into industry.
+
+It was a time of unusually painful bustle and excitement, yet there was
+no cheeriness about the daily tasks. Indoors there was a hush even in
+the scrubbing of benches, tables, and platters, almost in the dash of
+the churn, for was not the widow still keeping her watch by the
+dead--the dead who could not be buried on the third day, but must wait
+until coroner and jury could be called together to verify the cause of
+Mrs. Edwards' widowhood? Mrs. Griffith was there, alternately to help
+Ales with her work, and to relieve the mourner--a kind, motherly sort of
+woman, one to rely on in emergency.
+
+Out of doors Rhys kept David well employed, telling him he would have to
+learn to be a man, directing him to do this or that with quite an
+elder-brotherly air of proprietorship, though not unkindly. Ales
+wondered what had come to him, he worked about the farm with so much
+more knowledge of the right thing to be done at the right time than she
+had given him credit for possessing.
+
+As for poor little Jonet and William, they shrank whispering into
+corners out of everybody's way, or slunk out into the bit of ground that
+did duty for a garden, or strayed into the orchard, where they made
+themselves useful picking up windfall apples for the pony and the pigs,
+and did their best to make themselves ill by eating the unripe fruit at
+the same time; for although four years old Jonet was imitative in
+assuming a protectorate over her two years brother, she had not herself
+outlived a childish love for the crude and indigestible. They were,
+fortunately, too young to comprehend the mystery of the closed room, yet
+the general air of restraint affected even them, as they went about hand
+in hand.
+
+The valley of the Taff has long been noted for its fertility. It was
+otherwise in the early years of the last century, when husbandry in
+Wales was so primitive that the spade did duty for the plough, and crops
+had to be wrung from exhausted soil wholly by hand-labour; ignorance,
+and old prejudice in favour of doing as their fathers had done before
+them, standing in the way of progress, equally with the paucity of good
+roads and bridges over which to convey produce.
+
+In places the lowlands near the river were fertile; and where the stream
+was bordered by lofty slopes, and not hemmed in by precipitous limestone
+crags, they were clothed with dense woods of fir and mountain ash, oak
+and beech, with sallows by the water edge, all more esteemed by the
+sparse population for their timber than for their wondrously picturesque
+beauty. But at the top of the mountain range eastward of the vale, and
+on their upper slopes, much of the ground was sour and boggy, and called
+for more agricultural knowledge and appliances than had found their way
+thither, even when this century was born.
+
+The farm of the Edwardses was so situated on the mountain-side, and
+certainly enjoyed a diversity of soil capable of development in capable
+hands. In Eglwysilan parish it was regarded as a fairly large farm, and
+the house was the envy of the neighbours, though my modern readers may
+think there was little to envy. It had not only three rooms besides the
+capacious kitchen, but that kitchen could boast two glazed windows, one
+on either side the entrance; a very rare distinction, except in good
+houses or towns, so rare that not even shutters closed the apertures
+through which air and light found their way to the two sleeping rooms or
+to the long apartment in the rear, which served a variety of purposes.
+These were the housing of general stores, household and farming
+implements, a passage being kept clear from the kitchen midway through
+to the back door and farmyard. And this was all the isolation considered
+necessary for the dairy and dairy utensils, notwithstanding the purpose
+to which the other half of its space was devoted.
+
+All these separate rooms were upon the ground floor. Stairs were almost
+unknown conveniences in the cots and farms of wild Wales. Even in the
+villages few were the inhabitants privileged to look down upon poorer
+neighbours from upper windows. Lime, however, was plentiful in
+Glamorganshire, and though walls were put together of roughly hewn
+stone, they were whitewashed both inside and out with conscientious
+frequency.
+
+In no place short of a mansion was much furniture to be found. And to
+say that Mrs. Edwards had a well-scrubbed dresser filled with wooden
+platters and with mugs of Staffordshire pottery; that she had not only a
+large oaken table, but a linen cloth to cover it on occasion, and that
+there was a chair near the chimney corner in addition to the high-backed
+bench, or settle, and the three-legged stools; that a spinning-wheel
+stood between the two bedroom doors opposite to the fireplace, and that
+a large oaken chest stood under one window containing the family stock
+of clothing, and of flannel the wheel had helped to spin, was to say
+that she was for her time and place a thrifty, well-to-do woman,
+somewhat in advance of her class.
+
+However, the great feature of the kitchen was the expansive open
+fireplace, where the fire was made on a broad hearthstone, slightly
+raised, the inside of the chimney, which sloped upwards towards the top
+like a narrowing funnel, being set with stone seats for the elders of
+the family.
+
+On the Tuesday following the catastrophe which had made Mrs. Edwards a
+widow--although all the morning there had been the trampling through of
+coroner and jurymen--a fierce fire of peat and fire-balls filled the
+whole of the hearth, and two huge iron pots like witches' cauldrons hung
+suspended by chains above it, bubbling and steaming. At the same time,
+in the large oven built into the wall on the right of the fireplace, she
+and her helpers had been baking spiced cake and oaten bread the whole of
+the morning, as if providing for a regiment of soldiers.
+
+It was a hot day and hot work, though casements and doors stood open to
+let out the vaporous fumes of cookery; and had not neighbourly Mrs.
+Griffith come with her young daughter Cate to the assistance of Ales and
+her troubled mistress, the former would have been unable to relieve Rhys
+of his voluntary but fatiguing duty at the remorseless churn, so great,
+if not unusual, were the preparations for the guests expected on the
+morrow.
+
+Indeed, as Mrs. Edwards said, she did not know what she could possibly
+have done without Owen Griffith and his wife, they had been such zealous
+friends to her in her great affliction.
+
+She was not aware how the man's tender conscience stung him for leaving
+Edwards to return home alone from Llantrissant. He was feeling himself
+in some sort responsible for her bereavement. At any rate, no brother
+could have served her in better stead had a brother been at hand.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[4] _Fach_, equivalent to the English dear.
+
+[5] Ales, pronounced Alis; in English, Alice.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+A BOY'S WILL.
+
+
+As my story concerns not the dead man, but the family he left behind, I
+might pass over his burial in silence, had it not been marked by
+peculiar customs, few traces of which remain. Mountainous and
+inaccessible regions retain their characteristic traits of life and
+language long after intercourse has fused together the differing speech
+and habits of dwellers on the plains, whether city or suburban.
+
+It was the last watch-night, and neither Ales nor her mistress had been
+in bed for a couple of nights, the girl electing to share the widow's
+watch beside the closed coffin of her good master, as Rhys would still
+have done had his careful mother not forbidden.
+
+But long before the grey mists of morning had risen above the tree-tops,
+or lifted off the mountain-side, Rhys was up and astir with them. There
+was no leisure for indulgence in grief. There was so much to be done and
+cleared away before the mournful business of the day began. There were
+flowers to gather to strew upon the coffin-lid, and carry to the grave.
+And, if the sheep and cattle out on the hill-side could find pasture for
+themselves, the cows and ewes must be milked, the pigs and poultry fed,
+or released to feed themselves.
+
+So Rhys and Ales were off betimes, laden with empty pails; bare-legged
+Ales brushing the dew from the gorse and heather as she trudged along
+with a pitcher balanced on her head, a stool tucked under one arm, a
+pail on the other, her knitting, for a wonder, left behind; Rhys, by her
+side, swinging a large milking-pail to balance a second stool.
+
+When they returned with laden pails to be emptied into the tall churn,
+the fire was aglow, the porridge ready, the younger children up and
+dressed in sombre suits, Davy in his first breeches, and all three stiff
+and uncomfortable in shoes and stockings, neighbourly Mrs. Griffith and
+her young daughter Cate having come upon the scene to set the afflicted
+and harassed widow free for the rest of the day.
+
+Owen Griffith was also there, and by the time breakfast was over and a
+clearance effected, Mrs. Edwards and Rhys had changed their garments and
+assumed the sable hooded-cloaks prescribed for mourners. Then the table
+was covered with a clean homespun linen cloth, and re-set with cold
+beef, cake, and cheese, for all comers, along with mugs to hold the
+customary draught of hot ale and _abelion_, the latter a spiced
+decoction of elderberries and herbs, chiefly rosemary, huge pitchers of
+which were kept piping hot on the hearth.
+
+Meanwhile, Owen Griffith and a companion had improvised a table of
+planks, and a long bench in front of the house, piling up turf and
+stones as supports, a proceeding William watched with wondering
+interest. He may have puzzled where the mugs and platters came from, and
+who would sit at the long boards and consume all the beef, the piles of
+cake, and the great cheeses set out in halves, and what the two empty
+bowls were for in the middle of each table.
+
+At all events, Jonet wondered, and communicated her perplexity to David,
+who in turn referred to Rhys, to be answered curtly, 'Wait and see! I'm
+more puzzled to know what do bring Owen Griffith here, ordering about
+and as busy as if he was master.'
+
+The mother could have told that a distant cousinship between Griffith
+and the deceased sufficed for authority to make all needful arrangements
+in the absence of nearer kin, and that she was extremely grateful to him
+for his kindness all through the trying time.
+
+Very soon the other children had their questions answered, for guests,
+bidden or unsought, came trooping in from valley and mountain near and
+far, not by twos and threes only, but by dozens; relatives, friends, and
+mere acquaintances, for Edwards was a man held in high esteem. All were
+in their Sunday best, yet very few had so much as a bit of crape, a
+black kerchief, or a black pair of stockings. Their presence was
+supposed a sufficient token of respect.
+
+In succession as they came began, not merely a clatter of subdued voices
+discussing the sad accident--which might have overtaken any of them--but
+a general distribution and consumption of cheese, cake, and ale
+flavoured with the _abelion_, which custom may have rendered palatable,
+the simple provisions rapidly disappearing and being replaced as fresh
+arrivals brought fresh appetites, sharpened by journeying through the
+keen morning air, and eaten in primitive fashion, each man bringing his
+own pocket-knife, and converting his bread into a plate to be cut up and
+eaten with the meat upon it.
+
+And as the widow could not be reasonably expected to provide for so
+numerous and impromptu a party--_cwrw_ being rather an expensive
+item--each partaker cast a sixpence or other coin into the bowl
+provided, a proceeding at which the younger children expanded their
+astonished eyes--all was so strange to them.
+
+Then the crowd, both within and without the house, made way for the
+bearers with their heavy burden, and for the black-cloaked widow and her
+two eldest orphans to follow.
+
+On account of their tender years, the roughness and distance of the road
+to be traversed, it had been decided to leave Jonet and William behind,
+in care of Ales.
+
+But silent William had had his wondering eyes and ears open the whole of
+the morning; and no sooner did it dawn on his infantile comprehension
+that his father was being carried away in the big box, and that his
+mother and brothers were going away with it, than he insisted on going
+likewise; clung to his mother's skirts, and held fast, neither amenable
+to persuasion nor command to release her and remain at home with
+obedient Jonet.
+
+No! He saw his mother and brothers in tears, and the bearers slowly
+moving away with the coffin in which his father was shut up, and in his
+baby-ignorance he concluded some great wrong was being done. He had been
+told by Ales that he would never see his father any more, and must have
+concluded the others were being taken away also; for when he was carried
+into the house by main force, he fought and struggled in Owen Griffith's
+strong arms, and cried with dogged persistence, 'Me will go! me shall
+go!'
+
+Even when shut up close in the bedroom, he kicked at the door and
+screamed, 'Let me out, let me out; I will go!' until, after a while, the
+noise ended in a sob and a scuffle, and busy Ales concluded he had
+wearied himself out and fallen asleep.
+
+When Ales, some quarter of an hour later, opened the door in compliance
+with Jonet's piteous entreaties, the room was deserted, and William
+nowhere to be found.
+
+Kicking at the hard door had hurt his toes, in spite of his new shoes,
+so he turned round to try his heels. On so doing he discovered that the
+small window-hole was wide open. In another minute he was across the
+room, scrambling up on to a box lying beneath the narrow aperture in the
+thick wall, a look of sudden triumph on his determined round face.
+
+He thrust out his head and beheld a long procession winding in and out
+of the rocky and uneven road, a multitude of high-crowned hats, some
+atop of women's linen caps, these rising above a medley of red and grey
+cloaks, striped petticoats and dark jackets crossed with small shawls,
+mingling with men's grey coats and blue ones; but it did not occur to
+the child, as it might strike us, that there was any incongruity in
+these vari-coloured garments on so solemn an occasion. All to him was
+new. He had never seen such a concourse of people before; his sole idea
+was that his mother and his brothers were being borne away after his
+father, and that he was bound to overtake and bring them back.
+
+The window was not much more than a yard from the ground outside, but it
+seemed far to so young a child. However, he managed to clamber up in
+some way, and to drop outside on his feet, and, after a sly glance round
+to see that the coast was clear, he trotted off as fast as his sturdy
+little legs would carry him, and out at a narrow gap in the stone wall,
+which did duty for a gateway; and as the descending procession moved but
+slowly, and there were occasional stoppages for change of bearers, he
+contrived to keep the rear of it in sight.
+
+Ere long his wood-soled shoes and stockings chafed and cramped his feet,
+and he sat down on a wayside stone to remove them. When he looked up,
+the last hat had disappeared, but, nothing daunted, he set off again at
+a run, carrying his shoes and stockings in his hands, and ere long
+caught sight of the nodding hats at a turn of the tortuous road.
+
+He had run nearly a mile, and was getting breathless and footsore, but
+he went panting forward, with no thought of giving in; but soon he began
+to call out for some one to stop, and tears ran coursing down his chubby
+cheeks. Still he trotted on for another half mile or so; but the pace
+became slower, the tears ran faster, and when the tail of the procession
+again disappeared he sobbed aloud, beset with fears.
+
+At this juncture a man leaning over a wall, who had followed the long
+train with his eyes, caught sight of the woe-begone child, in its black
+frock, limping painfully along, and asked what he was doing there, and
+what he was crying for.
+
+The answer was not very coherent or articulate, but the man was sharp as
+he was good-natured. In a very short time he was out in the road, with
+William Edwards mounted on a sleek ass, following in the wake of the
+mourners, who after a short distance on the level began to ascend the
+lofty hill on the brow of which, like an eagle on its eyrie, stood
+Eglwysilan's[6] ancient church, with the modest vicarage beside it,
+isolated from the widely scattered parishioners, and almost inaccessible
+in foul or wintry weather.
+
+Local tradition assigned to this time-worn edifice a date coeval with
+the apostles. But suppose we allow the apostles to have slept for nearly
+three hundred years, and assign to our British St. Helena (or Elian),
+the church-founding mother of Constantine, the credit of selecting the
+breezy site for a structure to which she stands sponsor, we still
+accredit the long-bodied, square-towered, and small-windowed church with
+a most venerable antiquity, and solid masonry which might make modern
+architects blush for shame.
+
+No sooner were adventurous William's fears of being left behind set at
+rest by overtaking the slow pedestrians of the long train, than his
+spirits revived. He began to look about him, and to question the kind
+cottager, 'What's this?' or, 'What's that?'
+
+Of course he spoke in Welsh, as did all the people. I but render their
+language into English for my readers.
+
+From his elevated seat he could overlook low walls, and glancing down
+through the autumnal woods on his left, where the red ash-berries shone
+temptingly bright against the russet--leaved oak and yellowing beech,
+caught glimpses here and there of the shining river that had proved so
+treacherously cruel to his poor father. But neither red berries nor
+glancing river had such powerful attractions for him as the stupendous
+pile whence boomed the tolling bell--the 'church' of which he had heard
+so oft, but never seen.
+
+He had gone with his sister and brothers to the wooded glen which
+bounded their own farm on the north, there to help, or hinder, the
+gathering of ash-berries and acorns; but of human habitations he had
+seen nothing hitherto so large as his own home.
+
+He seemed absolutely fascinated by the grey lichen-covered church, and
+its low massive square tower, which he took for a huge chimney, and the
+nearer they drew to it the greater became his absorption.
+
+Being told, in answer to a query, 'People do go there to say prayers,'
+he asked again, 'Why for? We say prayers at home.' But though the man
+scratched his tangled red locks, no adequate reply was forthcoming.
+
+At that moment there was a halt at the arched lych-gate. All the men
+took off their hats, for the white-robed vicar had come to lead the way
+into the church.
+
+The boy, who had no hat to remove, could only look on and listen in
+blank astonishment, understanding nothing of the solemn ceremony, but
+awed by the mysterious proceedings, and the unfamiliar aspect of the, to
+him, vast interior.
+
+It was not until he beheld the coffin lowered into the 'big hole' that
+he screamed out, and was not to be pacified, though Owen Griffith stole
+gently away from the grave-side and took him in his arms for the second
+time that day.
+
+The ceremony was soon over, and nothing heard but the sobbing of the
+mourners and the dropping of small coin into the shovel the sexton held
+forth for their reception; for thus were the fees of the vicar and
+himself paid by general contribution, and not merely by the bereaved
+relatives. It was an old custom, seldom better observed than on this
+occasion; for of the motley multitude drawn thither to show their esteem
+for the dead and their sympathy with his family, two-thirds were wofully
+poor, had travelled far, and lost a day's earnings to be there; but few
+so poor as to pass the sexton's spade without a tributary coin, however
+small. Set it, therefore, to their credit, and also that all were
+decently clad, and flaunted no rags, if they had no crape to mourn in.
+Custom is its own law, and respect is not shown by the colour of a coat.
+
+But what of the little fellow who had found his way thither, and created
+so much consternation by his unseemly interruption?
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[6] Or, Eglwys-elian.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+PAYING THE RENT.
+
+
+''Deed to goodness! that boy's rightly named, for he's Will by name and
+will by nature!' said Ales when the child was brought home, showing no
+remorse for the trick he had played her, and little but indifference to
+the chiding of his mother or Rhys.
+
+'Me fought they was take you all away. Me said me would go. Me _did_
+go!' was all the excuse they could extract from him.
+
+He had made his return home triumphantly on the donkey of his stranger
+friend, a peat-cutter named Robert Jones, and was not at all disposed
+for humiliation. On the contrary, he was rather proud of his victory,
+and excited by his introduction to new scenes.
+
+The man, who was hospitably received and entertained, along with a
+numerous party of 'cousins,' for whose refection boiled beef and _cwrw
+da_ had been again set out, was quite ready to recount where and how he
+had picked up the child, and expressed his surprise at the resolute
+endurance that had carried him so far on a stony, unknown road, no less
+than the strong affection which had overpowered the little fellow's
+natural fears and sense of fatigue or pain.
+
+He repeated with much humour some of the boy's queer questions and
+sayings, promising to give him another donkey-ride some day. And
+finally, when taking his departure, Robert Jones patted the boy's brown
+head, and called him 'a little hero!' as the child ran past with Jonet.
+
+This was not very wise, for the tone of admiration was ill calculated to
+repress the child's early developed strength of will, or to soothe the
+ruffled feelings of Rhys on finding his own superlative good conduct
+apparently unappreciated, and William's wilful disobedience thus
+applauded.
+
+His chagrin did not escape the notice of the man, who, going round the
+country as he did, selling peat and culm,[7] had frequent opportunities
+for the study of human nature.
+
+'Yes, look you,' cried he from the doorway, as he saw a scornful curl on
+the lip of Rhys, 'your little brother will be greater than any of you
+some day--head of the house perhaps.'
+
+'He never will. I'm eldest, and then there's Davy. _He's_ a baby!' was
+Rhys' indignant protest.
+
+'A great good man, or a great bad one, Robert Jones?' called out Ales
+after the turf-cutter, an old acquaintance of hers. She had not forgiven
+William the fright he had caused by his escapade.
+
+'Indeed, sure, and that depends on what you make of him among you,' the
+peat-cutter called back over his shoulder, ere he bestrode his donkey
+and went off.
+
+'The man is right, Jane Edwards,' said Owen Griffith then to the widow;
+'there do be great capacities for good or evil in Willem; he will need a
+firm hand to control him.'
+
+'Ah, sure,' she sighed deeply, her grey eyes filling with tears, 'and
+now the firm hand is gone.'
+
+'Ah, 'deed for sure! more's the pity!' was echoed round the board.
+
+Rhys alone made no remark; but he set his lips close over his teeth, and
+tightened his grip on his knife-handle, looking as if he thought _his_
+hand firm enough to control his baby-brother, and as if _he_ meant to
+curb the wilful little one, whatever others might do. Ales saw it, if
+the mother did not.
+
+Meanwhile William, unaware of his eldest brother's paternal intentions,
+was seated under an apple-tree with Jonet, struggling for words to give
+expression to all the wonders he had seen and heard that day, the 'big
+house with the big chimney' more than all; whilst Davy, leaning
+listlessly against the tree trunk, as if fatigued with his long walk,
+crammed his mouth with bread and cheese, and smiled complacently at the
+youngster's first impressions of things familiarity had deprived of
+attraction for him, though over some he looked serious enough.
+
+Five miles away on the south-east from the mountain spur on which the
+Edwards' family had held a farm for more than a century, lay, in a
+broad plain among barren hills, the grand old ruins of Caerphilly
+Castle, the ancient stronghold of the Despencers, and the very small
+straggling market town it overshadowed, a town which had either gone to
+ruin or ceased to grow, since the great castle had been despoiled and
+tenantless.
+
+It had ceased to be a borough in King Henry VIII.'s time, but still it
+clung to its fair and market, and thither came farmers and their wives
+with their produce; miners or their wives, and the servants from the few
+great houses thereabouts, as buyers. And there, too, came, at stated
+periods, with his string of pack-horses, the travelling collector of the
+hand-made goods of the district, such as knitted hosiery, linen checks,
+woollen shawls, flannels, blankets, all spun and woven in farms and
+cottages scattered among the mountains. He was the medium between the
+English merchant and the poor producer, who in the days when there were
+neither canals nor railroads, nor any facilities for swift conveyance of
+goods or people, could otherwise have found no market for his wares. As
+it was, the weaver might probably have obtained better prices at
+Cardiff, but the miles of extra distance had to be calculated in the
+reckoning.
+
+Early on the Thursday morning Mrs. Edwards, with a grey duffle[8] cloak
+over her short black linsey[9] gown, and a black, low-crowned man's hat
+above her white linen cap, her healthy face pale and worn with the
+agitation of the week, stood by her egg and butter basket, debating
+whether she should go to the market alone, or yield to the entreaty of
+Rhys and take him along with her.
+
+It was likewise the rent-day. Mr. Pryse, the noble landowner's steward,
+condescendingly rode all the way from Cardiff to Caerphilly to meet his
+lord's tenantry at the little inn, 'The Cross Keys,' and woe betide the
+poor unfortunate who failed to put in an appearance, or to bring the
+full quota of coin.
+
+She was in no predicament of that kind, although she felt she might have
+been; but, hitherto, Edwards had always paid the rent himself, even if
+she had borne him company, and she rather shrank from her first
+encounter with the disagreeable agent.
+
+'You had better let me go, mother. Mr. Pryse will find that you are not
+quite alone, and may be more civil when he sees how big and strong I am,
+whatever,' urged Rhys.
+
+(Mr. Pryse was a little, wizened, cantankerous fellow, with a skin like
+shrivelled parchment.)
+
+Ales put in her word. ''Deed, mistress, you had best take the boy. A
+little stick is better than no stick in a fight.'
+
+Ales had settled the question with this last remark.
+
+'Well, perhaps it's best to be having a witness when you deal with queer
+folk,' assented her mistress; and Rhys had permission to scuffle off and
+slip on his black short-tailed jacket and breeches, so as to look his
+best and bravest. He was a sturdy, well-grown lad for his years, with a
+firm chin and fearless grey eyes, and whether it was fancy or reality
+his mother thought him taller in his new clothes.
+
+He certainly was developing rapidly; for no sooner was the shaggy pony
+jogging along with its double load, Mrs. Edwards in front with her
+basket resting on a bag of wool she had combed and spun, than he begun
+to expatiate on the necessity there was now for him to learn how to go
+to market, and buy and sell, if he was to be a real help to her. He
+'could not be learning too much or too soon,' he said, and was not
+contradicted, though a week earlier she would have laughed at him.
+
+The road wound in and out among the hills, where the abundant waxen
+blossoms of the cross-leaved heath were fast losing their delicate blush
+and fading with the season, and the rosettes of the sundew had forgotten
+their dead florets a month or more. The very bracken was turning brown
+and husky, and the roadway was strewed with yellow and russet leaves
+that were whirled hither and thither by the wind or were trodden into
+the earth by unrelenting hoofs.
+
+For it was also the first October fair, and there was no lack of company
+by the way. Owen Griffith, farmer and weaver, had joined them early with
+a great pack of flannel across his mare; and from almost every fold of
+the hills came one or more on foot or horseback to swell the general
+stream, every one, male or female, knitting along the road. The grimy
+collier and the swart digger of tin and iron hailed each other by the
+way, and the widow had many a respectful salutation as they jogged
+along, and answered many an inquiry about the boy behind her.
+
+Her first business when they reached Caerphilly was to get over her
+ordeal with Mr. Pryse, Griffith kindly taking charge of her horse and
+commodities.
+
+The narrow entrance to the inn was crowded with tenants on their way to
+the important deputy's room or from it, but all were ready with natural
+politeness to make way for William Edwards' widow. Mr. Pryse might have
+taken a lesson from men of lesser degree.
+
+From the table by the window where he sat, with an inkhorn and papers
+before him, small piles of coin at his right hand, he looked up.
+
+Rhys had taken off his hat; the steward, to assert his superiority, kept
+his upon his head.
+
+'So I hear you're a widow, Mrs. Edwards,' was his abrupt salutation.
+'The farmer could not see his way home, I'm told, and so got drowned.
+Blind drunk, I suppose?' A supercilious lift of his narrow shoulders
+emphasised his brutal comment.
+
+Rhys flamed up. 'No, sir; my father _never_ got drunk. He could not see
+for the mist, and the flood carried him away. If he had been drunk, sir,
+he could not have crossed the Rhonda ford.'
+
+If Mrs. Edwards had been shocked by the steward's unfeeling rudeness,
+now she feared her farm was in peril, and began to wish she had left
+Rhys outside.
+
+With half-shut eyes, Mr. Pryse scanned the impetuous boy from head to
+foot curiously. Ignoring the warm defence of a dead father, he drew his
+sinister brows together, and asked curtly--
+
+'That your son?'
+
+''Deed, yes, sir.'
+
+'How old is he?'
+
+'Twelve last March, sir.'
+
+An unpleasant smile thinned the thin lips that asked again--
+
+'Your eldest?'
+
+'Yes, sir.'
+
+'Humph! And do you expect to manage the farm with only _his_ help?'
+
+'Not altogether, sir. I've'--
+
+'What?' he interrupted. 'Come to give it up?'
+
+'_No_,' said the widow firmly. 'I have come to pay the rent. I can hire
+a man. But _I_ shall be the farmer, please God.'
+
+She counted out the money on the table as she spoke, the fire in her
+eyes burning up the tears.
+
+'And what sort of a farmer will _you_ make?' he replied with a sneer.
+'You'd better give up the holding at once.'
+
+'You'd better wait and see, sir. When I cannot pay the rent I may give
+in, not before. I am wanting the receipt, look you.'
+
+'Humph! Oh, ah, the receipt, sure!'
+
+Had he counted on her being so ignorant, or simple, or careless as to
+pay rent and take no receipt, his quill pen went squeaking over the
+paper so reluctantly? At all events he watched her narrowly through his
+slits of eyes as she took it up and read it carefully over, before she
+folded it up and stowed it away in her needle-book for safe carriage in
+her capacious pocket.
+
+He was not quite so confident of her incapacity for management when she
+left with a brief 'Good-morning,' and was followed by her son, who put
+on his hat and said never a word. He was wise, for if he had said
+anything there would have been unpleasantness.
+
+So there would have been had he heard the growl that followed them.
+'Humph! the young cub's as hot and unmannerly as his pig-headed lout of
+a father! but he'll get his nails cut when the widow marries again,
+indeed will he.'
+
+'Mother, does Mr. Pryse ever cheat any one? I don't think he wanted you
+to have that receipt you had to be asking for,' whispered Rhys when they
+got outside. 'I felt as if I'd like to knock him down, 'deed I did.'
+
+'Hush, Rhys,' and the widow looked round, afraid of listeners; 'you must
+not say that. He's a very hard man, and nobody does be liking him much,
+but I never heard of his really cheating any one. You must be very
+careful not to offend him. Your poor father did it once, and he has owed
+us a grudge ever since.'
+
+'Then he is a bad man, and I shall hate him for the wicked words he said
+of father.'
+
+Owen Griffith was waiting, and brief was the widow's opportunity to
+impress on Rhys the sin and danger of fostering hatred. As brief was the
+influence on him. Mr. Pryse, apart from the insult to his father's
+memory, had touched the sensitive nerve of his own sprouting
+self-sufficiency, and shown, so the boy thought, a tendency to overreach
+his mother; and, without any analysis of his own motives, Rhys had
+conceived on the spot an unconquerable aversion to the unprepossessing
+steward.
+
+When Owen Griffith's turn came, Mr. Pryse was, for him, unusually bland
+and gracious, much interested in his small holding and the welfare of
+his family, and _incidentally_ interested in his near neighbours, the
+family so suddenly deprived of its head. But though he passed the
+weaving farmer through a very fine sieve, he got nothing for his pains
+that could be laid up against either the drowned man or the capable
+widow.
+
+So capable, that she had disposed of her wool, her butter and eggs, sold
+a quantity of oats from a sample, hired a trustworthy young man named
+Evan Evans for the farm, made her own purchases, called to see the
+rheumatic mother of Ales, who lived in a small cot built within the very
+ruins of the castle, exchanged messages and Christian sympathy with the
+old dame, and was refreshed and ready for her return home with Rhys long
+before Owen or his friends thought of stirring.
+
+And home they got whilst there was light to pick their way, though
+clouds had been gathering in the south-west, and the first drops of a
+heavy downpour caught them as they neared the farm. They were welcomed
+by the joyous shouts of the little ones, and the assurance of Ales that
+they had all of them been 'as good as gold,' and well deserved the
+gingerbread brought home for them. Even William, of whom there had been
+some doubts, accepted the 'going to market' as a common occurrence, and
+had given her very little trouble, though he had exacted a promise that
+she would take him some day to see 'the great big house, with the big
+chimney, that they called the church.'
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[7] Culm, the dust of hard coal, used for fuel when mixed with clay and
+peat.
+
+[8] Duffle, made both in scarlet and grey, was a very thick,
+close-grained woollen cloth, its upper surface covered with pin-head
+curly knots. It was almost waterproof.
+
+[9] Linsey-woolsey, a mixture of linen and woollen, is still in use.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+THE NEW INMATE.
+
+
+The rain was still coming down with steady persistence when, two hours
+later, Evan Evans lifted the great wooden latch of Brookside Farm, and
+entered the large kitchen with a 'God save you' for greeting.
+
+Ales, who was giving the last stir to something bubbling in an iron pot
+on the fire, whence came a steaming savour of leeks, turned round
+sharply to see what sort of a young fellow had come into the house as an
+inmate, and seeing, returned his salutation, as did the two lads waiting
+for their supper.
+
+What she saw was a strong-limbed young man, about three or four and
+twenty, with a good-humoured smile upon his face, as if a drenched coat
+and muddy nether garments were quite minor discomforts. He carried a
+lighted lanthorn in one hand, and a bundle slung on a stick over his
+shoulder.
+
+'If you're Evan Evans,' said she, 'you'd best take off your coat, and
+sit down by the fire to get dry,' a corresponding smile on her face
+sufficing for a welcome, and indicating her content with the sample as
+presented.
+
+As if to ensure her good graces, his first act was to step across the
+floor, and with one strong brown hand lift from the chimney-hook the
+heavy broth-pot, on the handle of which the girl had just laid both of
+hers.
+
+'Good for you, Evan Evans; may you be always as ready,' said she,
+showing her firm white teeth, and hastening to ladle out the broth the
+boiled beef had supplied.
+
+'Always ready for a good supper,' was the prompt reply. 'One does not
+always get broth every day.'
+
+Meat was not often boiled for broth then on small farms. Indeed, was
+never cooked except on rare occasions.
+
+At that moment Mrs. Edwards came in from what we may call the 'dairy' in
+the rear.
+
+'I did not expect you to-night,' said she, 'but it is well you are
+here.'
+
+'Sure and indeed, ma'am, you would not have me come on a Friday, and I
+was not myself like to come on a Saturday, and I thought you would want
+me before the Monday, look you.'
+
+'Why not Saturday?' interrupted Rhys, waiting impatiently for his broth.
+
+'Sure and "Saturday's flitting is a short sitting" my Irish grandmother
+was used to say, and she was a wise woman,' answered the young man
+gravely.
+
+Superstition was so widespread and general, that no one uttered a word
+of doubt or dissent to either proposition, but Mrs. Edwards remarked,
+''Deed and it's quite as well you came. We have lost a week, and it's
+time some of the roots was out of the ground. It will be soft for the
+digging after the rain.'
+
+'Do you be having any potatoes among your crops?' he asked then over his
+steaming bowl of thick broth.
+
+''Deed, no; Edwards' (a sigh) 'said they was only for the gentry to grow
+in their gardens.'
+
+'Then I would have you try them next year. The head man at Castella says
+they was the most profitable crop he had on the land. They was good for
+the cows and the hogs if he had any to spare from the family table. He
+was be going to plough half an acre of ground for them.'
+
+'Plough? What's that?' questioned Rhys, to whom the very word was
+unknown.
+
+Evan explained to more than one attentive listener.
+
+'Ah, well,' said Mrs. Edwards, when he had done. 'Where I was in
+England, every farmer did plough his fields. And my own father used to
+be saying that the laws King Howel the Good did be making nearly eight
+hundred years ago, would not allow any man to be a farmer unless he
+could make his own plough, as well as guide it. But there did be only
+wooden ploughs in those days, and they did get knocked to bits on the
+stony ground among the mountains of wild Wales, and they did get out of
+use, whatever. I did want to have a good strong plough here, but Edwards
+was always be saying the spade was good enough for him. His father and
+his grandfather before him had dug every rood of the land with the
+spade, and what was good enough for them was good enough for him.'
+
+'Good enough's all very well where there's never a better,' thrust in
+go-ahead Ales, with the freedom of the time. 'You didn't be thinking
+your grandmother's distaff good enough for you when you bought that
+spinning-wheel.'
+
+Both Evan and Rhys looked up from their half-empty bowls across the
+table at Ales, as if struck by her pertinent shrewdness.
+
+'Indeed, Ales, I did not; nor did I think holes that let in the wind and
+weather along with the light good enough. But till the grandfather did
+die of rheumatics there could be no glass windows. And I did not think
+it good for the pigs to run loose, rooting up my garden and destroying
+what they could not eat, but there has never been a sty built to this
+day.'
+
+'And what's a sty?' asked Rhys.
+
+'A house for the hogs.'
+
+Rhys laughed. 'Why, mother, who ever did see pigs with a house of their
+own? All pigs run loose in the woods. Lewis did say to me he never saw
+any but ours shut up in a fold like sheep.'
+
+'Never mind Lewis. He has never gone far from Eglwysilan. If he had been
+in England as I was before I married, he would have been seeing
+pig-styes on every farm. But there be plenty in Wales, and Evan will set
+up one here very soon.'
+
+'Yes, indeed,' was the man's hearty response.
+
+There was some further talk over work to be done, and how it was to be
+done, before Evan followed Rhys to bed, neither having a word to say
+against overcrowding, although David was there before them.
+
+And then Mrs. Edwards and Ales, comparing notes, agreed that she had
+hired a very capable man.
+
+It might have been said with equal propriety that the widow had shown
+her own capability in the choice of a farm-servant who would live in
+close companionship with her fatherless sons.
+
+Over the board set forth with funeral meats she had named her want among
+the assembled relatives, and then had ensued a warm controversy on the
+merits of various men likely to be at the Caerphilly hirings.
+
+Some one had named Evan Evans. Thereupon arose a general outcry that he
+would ruin the farm with the notions he had picked up at Castella, where
+there was an English farm-bailiff. It was admitted that he was
+hard-working, honest, sober, and religious, but all these were as dust
+in the balance compared with the crime of departing from the old ways,
+and preferring new methods of husbandry.
+
+She had listened, making no comments. But she had hired the young fellow
+the more readily for those very detractions. She had not found the old
+ways pleasant or profitable. She meant to show Mr. Pryse what good
+farming could do for but indifferent land. And she counted on Evan's
+religious principles as warrants for the example he would set before her
+growing boys.
+
+The hiring was for the year, and could only be terminated by mutual
+agreement. At the same time it was renewable from year to year, and
+sometimes both men and maids remained with the same master or mistress
+half their lives. If any breach of contract occurred, the law was very
+strict and severe. A prison awaited the servant absent without leave, or
+wilfully refractory, and heavy fines the masters who ill-treated the
+servants so hired. Such cases were not frequent, but they did occur at
+intervals.
+
+Though the sky was clear, the rain was still dripping from the eaves,
+and had worn little runnels in the soil and between the grey stones on
+its way down hill to swell the noisy woodland brook, when Evan and the
+boys turned out of their close and darkened bedroom in the morning, and
+Rhys volunteered to show the former over the farm before the others were
+up.
+
+''Deed, no,' said the man, 'that do be your mother's place. She might
+not be liking us to make so free, whatever. We can make up the fire, and
+set on the porridge-pot for Ales, to lose no time. Where are the
+fire-balls kept?'
+
+This was a check to the boy's newly-born importance. Not choosing to
+wait upon the man, he ordered Davy to fetch the fire-balls, and marched
+out at the back in some dudgeon. Meanwhile, bidable Davy brought the
+fire-balls. Evan, all unconscious of the young master's wounded
+dignity, fanned the smouldering peat on the hearth to a glow, and had a
+clear fire under the black pot when Ales and her mistress came upon the
+scene, leaving Jonet and William still asleep.
+
+The morning ablutions of Evan and the two elder boys were performed in
+the open air, at a spring which gushed from the stony mountain-side into
+a natural water-worn basin; Mrs. Edwards and Ales in the nondescript
+apartment in the rear, there being little time or ceremony wasted in the
+operation.
+
+The rough-and-ready toilette completed, Ales went back to the kitchen;
+and the sun having just risen above the mountain-top to waken up bird
+and beast, and turn the lingering rain-drops into fairy gems, Mrs.
+Edwards herself led Evan over the primitive homestead, from the rude
+stabling and cowshed, where the fowls roosted overhead, to the
+dilapidated thing they called a barn, and the sodden farmyard, where a
+huge sow and her brood of piglings lay wallowing in the mire.
+
+Two years earlier the young man would have looked on all with
+complacency as the common state of things; but then he could only shake
+his head and coincide with his new mistress that there was room for
+improvements that would require time, energy, and some outlay. They had
+looked into the orchard, and at the stone fences, and, the survey over,
+came in at the front, where Mrs. Edwards had done her ineffectual best
+to copy an English garden for herbs and flowers, and to keep out pigs,
+poultry, and goats.
+
+By this time Ales and offended Rhys were back from milking, the two
+little ones were washed and dressed, and the porridge was ready for
+pouring out, quiet Davy having lent a hand wherever needed, without any
+fuss or assumption. He was always ready to fetch and carry at any one's
+bidding, and was seldom allowed to sit still. It was he who had brought
+water from the spring to wash the younger ones, and emptied it when
+used; he who had laid wooden bowls and spoons on the table and brought
+in the great brown pitcher of milk, and was lifting William to his seat
+at the table when his mother and Evan came in at the door. Just docile
+Davy, of whom nobody made much account either to praise or blame.
+
+Rhys, who had not yet recovered his composure, had already taken his
+seat at the table in silent displeasure, and took no note of their
+entrance, but both Jonet and William stared hard at the strange man, the
+former shyly, the latter with open-mouthed wonder, which he put into
+words.
+
+'Who's 'oo?' he wanted to know when Evan drew his stool to the table
+beside him.
+
+Being answered pleasantly, he rained childish questions thick and fast
+on the 'strange man,' all relative to his presence there, and was barely
+silenced when grace was said over the hot porridge. There had been so
+many strange men coming and going in the past week that he wondered if
+Evan had been left behind. His queries only ceased with a scalded mouth.
+
+'If you want to learn farming, Rhys, you had better come with Evan and
+me. We are going over the fields to settle what is best to be done,'
+said his mother when breakfast was over.
+
+Had his mother asked him to go along with _her_ to settle what had best
+to be done, and how, he would have risen with alacrity to share her
+cares and counsels, but much as he had professed his desire to learn he
+did not want Evan Evans for a teacher. Had not his interest and
+curiosity been excited overnight, he might have lingered behind, so sore
+was he from the morning's rebuff. As it was he rose but sullenly to
+obey.
+
+'May I come?' asked Davy.
+
+''Deed, no. You will be wanted here. Get your knitting and mind Jonet
+and Willem.'
+
+The peremptory reply served for both Davy and Jonet, though the latter
+did put a pouting finger to her lips. But William had ideas and a will
+of his own.
+
+'Me go with 'oo!' 'Me must go!' 'Me _will_ go!' 'Man, take me!' were his
+persistent iterations, while his sturdy bare legs and feet went
+pattering after his elders over the rain-washed stones, and he struggled
+with all his little might against the attempts of Rhys to force him
+back.
+
+Their wills were equally strong, but their strength was not. No doubt
+Rhys clutched the tender arms too tightly, for William screamed and
+cried out--
+
+''Oo hurt me; 'oo hurt me.'
+
+Evan, who had reached the gateway with Mrs. Edwards, turned back,
+saying pitifully, 'Don't be hurting the little man. If your mother do be
+willing to let him go, I will carry him on my shoulders, look you.'
+
+In another minute, triumphantly, masterful William was mounted on the
+low stone wall, on his way to the big man's shoulders, his mother
+smiling a passive consent, whilst Rhys bit his under lip and clenched
+his hands tightly in ill-concealed chagrin.
+
+It was the second time that morning Evan Evans, the hired man, had
+thwarted him, his father's first-born. Rhys, in his own opinion, had
+ceased to be a boy. He had quite decided that he was to be his mother's
+right-hand man, and that they would manage the farm between them, with
+underlings of course, and here was this great interloper come and
+thrusting him into the background.
+
+[Illustration: MOUNTED ON THE LOW WALL, ON HIS WAY TO EVAN'S
+SHOULDERS.--_See page 66._]
+
+It was with no good will he followed over grass land and arable, over
+the fallow and on to the high moorland, where the cows ruminated among
+the tall grasses, and the sheep nibbled close to the ground the sweet
+morsels the cows had left, and the omnivorous goats browsed on heather
+or anything else in the way of vegetation. He heard them talk of the
+carrots and other roots to be dug up and housed at once, of the lime and
+farm manure to be laid on this field or that, and the suitable crops to
+be raised; but though he had a crude perception that Evan was a better
+farmer than his father, he sullenly resented the change in
+contemplation. All the more, perhaps, because his mother called for his
+attention, with 'You hear this, Rhys?' 'Yes, Rhys; indeed, that will
+be best.'
+
+He gloomed, whilst William, released from his perch, ran hither and
+thither in high glee, chasing away the rooks and water-wagtails that
+were, unsuspectedly, doing the farmer good service.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+LOST.
+
+
+It is difficult in these days of chemistry, steam, and mechanical
+contrivances for reducing labour--if not for dispensing with it
+altogether--to realise the difficulties attending the farmer in wild
+mountainous districts, far removed from the centres of civilisation, and
+unacquainted with the agricultural implements and appliances even then
+in use in more favoured districts. Places where there were no carts and
+no proper roads, and where the ascents and descents were too abrupt for
+anything but a biped or a mule; where every acre of the cultivated
+mountain or moorland had to be turned over with the spade, and every
+particle of manure laid on the land had to be carried thither in baskets
+strapped on human shoulders, or in panniers borne by ass or mule.
+
+Yet, such were the difficulties Mrs. Edwards and other Welsh farmers had
+to contend with even up to the present century, the moorland farmers of
+Cumberland and the North-West Riding of Yorkshire being somewhat
+similarly situated.
+
+The loss of a whole week's labour at the beginning of October was a
+serious detriment. Even Rhys knew that, and finding that he was to take
+his instructions from his mother and not from Evan, he smothered his
+ill-humour and buckled to in earnest, though his brows contracted when a
+new form of labour was suggested to him.
+
+'Rhys, do you think you could cut down the bracken at the edge of the
+wood?' asked his mother dubiously.
+
+'Yes, surely, I can cut it. Did I not help to reap the oats? But why
+should it be cut?'
+
+'Evan says it will save straw in the farmyard, and should be stacked for
+bedding for the pigs and cattle before it do be too late. And after it
+has served the beasts, it will be better for some of the land than
+lime.'
+
+''Deed, an' Evan do seem mighty clever! Houses and bedding for pigs
+indeed!'
+
+'Yes, indeed, Rhys, and I am not too proud or too old to learn from him.
+Please God, he will be helping us to keep the farm in spite of Mr.
+Pryse.'
+
+Not another word of scorn fell from the boy's lips.
+
+Bidding Lewis, the shepherd's son, follow with Breint, the pony, to
+carry home the fern, as instructed by his mother, he, with a sickle over
+his arm, took his way across a grassy slope towards the steep woodland,
+stepping alongside the musical runnel the gushing hill-side spring sent,
+as overflow from a huge stone trough or basin, across the land and down
+the incline to join the tumbling brook from which the farm derived its
+name. The tawny brook itself had its source high up in the peaty moss on
+the mountain-top, and had worn, or found, a channel in a narrow cleft
+between precipitous rocks, whose seamy sides barely afforded foothold
+for fir and larch. Yet widening and deepening into a picturesque glen,
+the ash and the elder hung out their red or purple-black berries over
+the noisy and tumbling watercourse, and the sturdy trunks of oak and
+beech uprose and spread out leafy arms to shade it from the too
+intrusive westering sun, dropping in a ripe acorn or a triangular nut
+quietly now and then, to float away and fructify in a future season far
+from the parent tree.
+
+It was otherwise when the wild north-east winds came rushing and roaring
+down the glen, for then ripe or unripe acorns and prickly mast were torn
+rudely away along with shoals of russet leaves and flung to the ground
+as offerings to the hogs and omnivorous goats, the brook coming in for
+its share, as well as the fringe of feathery ferns.
+
+The larger portion of the farm lands were on the steep but undulating
+uplands above the white homestead, the more fertile, including the
+orchard and the garden-plot, lying below.
+
+Bordered on either side by rough stone fences, and separating the grass
+land from these, a wider well-trodden path or road, which the flaky
+character of the stony ground converted into a natural succession of
+broad shallow steps, trended obliquely from the house to the level or
+main road such as it was. Across this, some two hundred yards farther
+north, the simple brook spread itself out and chafed at the
+stepping-stones which barred its passage to deeper woods and the great
+river that would swallow it up. Just as some thoughtless youth rushes
+from the safe shelter of a home too narrow for his ambition, and
+plunging into the vortex of the untried world is lost for ever.
+
+Some thirty or forty paces beyond the shallow brook stood the low
+cottage of Owen Griffith, whitewashed like the larger farm above. Then
+the lane took a turn and was crossed by intersecting roads perplexing to
+strange travellers.
+
+The outskirts of a flourishing and busy town now cover much of the land
+I have described so carefully. Even the lanes and highways have
+undergone changes since the Edwardses held Brookside Farm and traversed
+them.
+
+On that sunny October forenoon, while Rhys and Lewis cut down fern on
+the borders of the wood, and Evan plied his spade to turn over the
+stubble in good furrows higher up the hill, Mrs. Edwards midway, like a
+true Welsh farmer's wife, resolutely dug up the long-rooted, tenacious
+carrots, sparing not her toil, whilst Davy (again in petticoats) and
+even four-year-old Jonet freed them from the loosened earth, and cast
+them into wicker baskets for Ales to carry from the field to the barn,
+poised on her head. The basket was not light when full, but she stepped
+along with ease and grace, knitting as she went or came, only tucking
+the rapidly increasing stocking in her girdling apron-string whilst she
+emptied her load, or changed an empty basket for a full one.
+
+At first, imitative William insisted on helping, or hindering, Davy and
+Jonet, and for a while was as busy as the rest. Then he began to trot
+beside Ales as she went to and fro. After a time the little bare legs
+grew weary, and when the toilers rested on upturned baskets, to take
+their noontide meal of oaten cake and buttermilk, he was almost too
+sleepy to eat or drink, and, resting his sunny head against his mother's
+knee, fell off into a doze.
+
+Seeing that, Ales promptly lifted him up in her strong arms, and,
+carrying him to the farm, laid him on his mother's bed and left him
+there, as she thought, secure from harm.
+
+Once or twice, after emptying her baskets in the barn, she came down to
+the house and found him sleeping peacefully. So an hour and a half must
+have slipped by, perhaps more, when turning in to look at her charge,
+she found the room vacant.
+
+Still, she was beset by no apprehensions of ill. She made up the
+smouldering fire, and did one or two little household matters before she
+went back to the field with her empty basket, nothing doubting but she
+would find the boy with his mother. He knew his way about the farm.
+
+'Is not Willem with you?' she cried out as she neared the group in the
+field. 'He is not in bed.'
+
+'Not in bed?' echoed his mother, but without alarm. ''Deed then, he will
+have gone to Evan or to Rhys. That will be it. He will have met Lewis
+with the pony, and got a ride in one of the empty panniers.'
+
+'Sure, and that's most like.'
+
+But on her next journey to the barn she saw Lewis bringing up the pony
+laden with the panniers of bracken, but no child. Hastily ridding
+herself of her load, she waited until he came near. Then she called
+out--
+
+'Have you seen Willem?'
+
+''Deed, no! Is he lost again?' came back in reply.
+
+'Lost? Name o' goodness, I hope not! Mistress will go distracted if he
+is. Empty your bracken, and keep a look-out; I'm off up the hill to
+Evan.'
+
+And away she sped at flying speed, straight as an arrow, over field and
+fallow. Her heart sank as she came in sight of Evan digging away as if
+his life depended on his day's labour, companioned only by feathered
+searchers for the worms he brought to light.
+
+'Evan!' she screamed, affrighted at last, 'have you seen Willem? We
+cannot find him anywhere, whatever.'
+
+Down went the man's spade, and over the freshly-turned ground he came
+bounding, in spite of his wooden-soled shoes. 'You don't mean to say the
+child is lost?' he cried.
+
+But she was already running back to her mistress, who took the alarm as
+soon as they came in sight, and clasping her hands in sudden terror,
+shrieked out, 'Oh, what is it? What has happened to my boy? Where is my
+darling Willem? Oh, if I lose him too, I shall go crazy!'
+
+Her only thought was that the child, in seeking Rhys, had fallen over a
+rock and been killed.
+
+Her shriek, her unbidden tears, communicated her fright to Jonet and
+Davy, who clung to her skirts and cried for companionship, Jonet hardly
+knew why.
+
+There was a general rush to meet Rhys.
+
+'Sure, he will be in the orchard,' said he confidently.
+
+But he was not in the orchard, not anywhere on the farm.
+
+''Deed, and I think he will be for going to the church,' put in Davy.
+'He wanted to be going yesterday, look you!'
+
+The idea was instantly caught up. Evan and Rhys were off in search, and
+Lewis after them. Ales in vain endeavoured to persuade the mother to
+remain behind, whilst she went up to the moor, to see if he had strayed
+thither after the sheep. 'Don't fret,' she said, 'they are certain to be
+bringing him back soon. His little legs would not carry him far.'
+
+'Oh, Ales,' expostulated her mistress, 'how can you ask me to sit still
+while my darling Willem may be dead or in danger?'
+
+'Mother,' said Davy, with a gulp to swallow a sob, 'I will stay and take
+care of Jonet if you both go. You will be good with me, won't you,
+Jonet?'
+
+'Yes, indeed,' replied the little girl, as his arm stole protectingly
+round her shoulders, and he kissed her tear-stained face, 'I will be
+very good.'
+
+So, with strong injunctions not to go away, the two children were left
+alone in the house, with only a grey cat and a rough dog to bear them
+company.
+
+At first they sat still and waited expectantly, clinging to each other.
+Then the silence and solitude became oppressive. Presently Jonet began
+to cry for her missing playfellow, and when brave-hearted Davy failed to
+console her, his own tears began to fall. A dreadful fear began to creep
+over him lest William should be lost like his father, and they might
+never see him again. How long the time did seem to those two children
+left alone with a new fear!
+
+Ales was the first to return. She found the two seated on the stone
+stile in front that commanded a view of the steep path, anxiously and
+with beating hearts watching for some one to come.
+
+She brought them no good news, and was off again with stool and pail,
+for the cows were lowing to be milked. But her very coming had broken up
+the dreary silence and monotony. And when she went she left them milk
+and cake, and the consciousness she was not far away. Then, at her
+suggestion, Davy began to teach Jonet to knit, and in the occupation
+time passed less painfully.
+
+Ales came back with her milk-pails, and commended them for being good;
+made up the fire and set on the pot for supper. And so long as the
+setting sun shone redly in through door and windows they were passive,
+and she bustled about her household affairs, hiding her own fears.
+
+But the sun set, and dusk came down, yet never a foot came near the farm
+to say the boy was found.
+
+Then Evan came up for lanthorns to renew the search. He said he had been
+to the very church gates, but could find no trace of the child. Owen
+Griffith had left his loom, and his wife had kept watch to give each
+returning seeker news of the others. Mrs. Edwards was then at the
+weaver's in pitiable distress, and Rhys rushing hither and thither
+almost as wild.
+
+The two children, unwilling to go to bed, had fallen asleep huddled
+together in the chimney corner, when, between nine and ten o'clock,
+restless Ales thought she heard a shout, and before she could get to the
+door in burst Rhys, crying out, 'He is found! he is found!' and close at
+his heels came Evan with the poor wanderer in his arms, limp and
+helpless, his hair and his clothes saturated with heavy dew or mist, his
+little bare feet cut and bleeding, his lips and hands stained with the
+juice of purple berries.
+
+The woods and every possible nook and corner seemed to have been
+explored, when Evan chanced to question a young man upon the Merthyr
+Road. The stupid fellow stared vacantly, then blundered out, ''Deed, an'
+sure I did hear something about an hour ago up by the Druid Stones, but
+I took it for a stray lamb bleating for the ewe.'
+
+'Well, sure, and it _might_ be a child crying. I didn't go to see,' he
+replied stupidly to a second question.
+
+[Illustration: LYING IN THE MIDST OF THE HOARY CIRCLE OF GREY
+STONES.--_See page 78._]
+
+Evan stopped to hear no more. Without seeking a regular path, he made
+his way through bush and bramble, over rock and hollow, and there in the
+very midst of the hoary circle of lichen-covered grey stones, which
+seemed to sentinel him round in upright double file, the light of the
+lanthorn revealed the child lying in a heap under the overhanging
+shadow of the great rocking-stone, his head pillowed on the arm that
+rested against its conical base. Had the child mistaken those grey
+stones for the upright slabs in the churchyard?
+
+The first rejoicing over, and the boy in bed, Rhys and Ales were both of
+opinion that he should be 'well whipped in the morning to teach him
+better than to put people in such frights.' And no doubt Evan was of the
+same mind, though he made no remark.
+
+But the tender-hearted mother could only thank God for his restoration,
+and say that he had punished himself quite sufficiently. He was not
+likely to stray again.
+
+Not for some time, for though all his garments were woollen, as were
+those of his elders, the damp, the exposure, no less than his childish
+terror, laid him up with a feverish illness that lasted for weeks.
+
+As well as could be made out from his disjointed confession, Davy's
+conjecture had been the true one.
+
+He had wakened, found himself alone, and had set off to 'see the big
+church,' nothing doubting he should find Robert Jones and his donkey to
+help him on his way. He had gone splashing through the shallow brook,
+and past Owen Griffith's unseen, but when he came to the bisecting roads
+his memory failed; he hesitated, turned to the right instead of the
+left, trudged on manfully northward, then took a by-path up-hill, as he
+fancied to the church, got bewildered among walls and winding ways, and
+out on the wild moor, stopping here and there to rest or gather
+blackberries, for he was growing both weary and hungry. But he never
+felt the solitude oppressive whilst there was a bird or a stray sheep
+about. And it was not until the dusk began to gather and he sank utterly
+exhausted under the great rocking-stone, that his courage forsook him,
+and he cried piteously in his hungry loneliness and desolation, cried
+himself into the insensibility of sleep, with only night and the
+everlasting arms around him.
+
+In losing himself had he lost his childish craving to see once more that
+wonder of wonders--the big church?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+THE YOUNG PLAGUE.
+
+
+Thankful as was Mrs. Edwards, the mother, for the restoration of her
+missing darling; as a farmer, sorely behind with the autumnal
+field-work, the loss of half a day's labour to every useful hand upon
+the farm chafed her no less than it irritated Rhys. But when the child
+was absolutely ill, and required careful nursing or watching, she was
+torn with a double anxiety. The life of her child was at stake, and so
+was her possession of the farm. There was so much to be done before
+November set in, and so few hands to accomplish all. The outdoor work
+could not be neglected, or the live stock and the crops would suffer.
+Yet _some one must_ remain indoors to watch the child, restless with
+fever. Davy was willing, but Davy was too young, and lacked strength to
+overcome resistance to nauseous draughts.
+
+She was at her wits' end; could not neglect her child, dared not neglect
+her farm.
+
+In this emergency, Rhys made a suggestion that Mrs. Griffith might
+perhaps be willing to spare her daughter Cate, a stout, red-haired,
+good-looking lass about his own age, who had already shown her active
+ability to make herself useful.
+
+After some slight hesitation on the part of the girl's mother, it was
+agreed that Cate should be at the farm early every morning, provided she
+returned home in the evenings before nightfall. Her temporary services
+were to be repaid with cheese made from the mixed milk of cows and ewes,
+or other farm produce, a customary mode of payment for casual service.
+
+Owen had suggested to his wife that the farm would be a good school for
+their girl. She would see things done there, both by Mrs. Edwards and
+Ales, that she had no chance of seeing at home, and she could have no
+better training for future service.
+
+The girl proved quite an acquisition. She was just as willing as Davy,
+and more efficient. When not wanted beside William, she was ready to
+relieve Ales at the churn or the scouring of pots and pails. Then she
+had a fairly good temper and persuasive ways that made her a capital
+nurse for a sick child with a resolute will.
+
+Jonet took to her amazingly. She brought some pieces of striped flannel,
+the refuse of her father's loom, and dressed up the little one's wooden
+doll like a real Welshwoman. And she brought green rushes from the
+brookside, and wove toy-baskets for her.
+
+Or, while Davy was away in the fields filling baskets with freshly-dug
+roots, or clearing the ground of stones (which many farmers in those
+days believed to _grow_, just as surely as weeds), and Jonet was ready
+to whimper for a playfellow, she would set down her knitting, or other
+work, to play at cat's cradle or push-pins; and, finding that Davy had
+tried to teach the little fingers to knit, she cast on stitches for a
+doll's belt, and, with a little patience on both sides, the feat was
+accomplished, and Jonet wonderfully proud of her new acquirement.
+
+By thus amusing the healthy child longing for a romp, she preserved
+quiet by the bedside of the sick one, whom an apothecary, brought all
+the way from Caerphilly, pronounced 'in a critical state.'
+
+Mrs. Edwards, anxiously coming and going, saw what a capital nurse she
+made, and judged she was of better use there than in the fields. Rhys,
+too, would put his head in through the open window now and then to ask
+how his brother was getting on, and satisfied himself that he had shown
+his discernment in suggesting Cate to his mother.
+
+And when William began to recover, which was not until November had well
+set in, no one was more willing to admit her obligations to the girl
+than was Jane Edwards. Nay, she went so far as to send Rhys to light
+Cate home when the shortening of the days caused her to be kept after
+dark, and Rhys never raised any objection.
+
+She had helped him on her first coming to strip the apple and pear trees
+of their late fruit, and to separate such as were to be saved for the
+market from those to be thrown into the mash-tub and crushed for cider.
+And on the first day that William was allowed to sit at an open door, he
+watched her and Rhys preparing the winter store of fire-balls, so
+willing was she to help in any way. Propped up in bed, he had seen
+Robert Jones once or twice lead a mule and an ass up the steep path with
+heavily-laden barrels slung across; but though he called faintly to the
+man through the open window, and was as usual inquisitive, he was little
+wiser when told they 'brought culm and clay for fire-balls.'
+
+Fire-balls were familiar things. Not so the culm or the clay, and to
+satisfy his persistent curiosity he was promised if he would keep quiet
+he should witness their conversion into the hard balls.
+
+A few yards from the house he saw on one side a great heap of black dust
+(the refuse of hard coal). This, barefooted Cate was riddling through a
+wire sieve (the very sieve Breint had brought safely home, though he
+lost the buyer), flinging away into a separate heap all that was too
+coarse to pass through the sieve. At a distance on the other side was
+laid a quantity of yellow clay, portions of which Rhys was moistening
+with water, beating and turning over with a spade, and when of the
+proper consistence adding, a spadeful at a time, the fine black dust
+Cate had sieved, to be again mixed and kneaded like dough, and finally
+worked with the hands into round hard balls, which he set aside to dry
+for fuel.
+
+The eagerness with which the pale little adventurer watched these grimy
+processes, his questions and quaint remarks, quite amused the two
+workers, but his searching interrogations speedily posed both of them;
+and when he wanted to know what _was_ coal, and what was clay, and why
+they mixed the two together to make them burn, he was greeted with fresh
+laughter, and an impatient, 'Oh, don't bother,' or its Welsh equivalent,
+from Rhys.
+
+But the little inquirer, who sat with his head on one side, resting it
+on his hand, was not contented with the put-off; and when Robert Jones
+came with a load of peat that afternoon, he was plied with the same
+questions.
+
+The man smiled. His own information did not go very far, but he did his
+best to reach infantile understanding; told him that the clay was a kind
+of earth dug from the river-side, and that coal grew underground, and
+was brought up in baskets out of a deep hole by a horse that was always
+walking round and round to wind them up to the top by a rope that wound
+round a thick wooden post.[10]
+
+This was a puzzler for William. He wanted to be taken there and then to
+see the horse go round and round.
+
+Ales, coming at that moment to pay the man, hoping to put a check on the
+child's new notion, exclaimed--
+
+'Name o' goodness, do you want the black man to carry you away down the
+dark pit-hole, where you would never see us any more whatever?'
+
+'Me don't fink they 'ood. They don't take man down,' replied the child
+sturdily; and at length the 'man,' ready to go about his business,
+promised to take him to see the horse go round 'some day.'
+
+''Oo said 'oo 'ood take me to see church, an' 'oo didn't,' then said
+William in high dudgeon, and lapsed into sullen silence. In all his long
+illness he had not forgotten the church he had seen but once.
+
+'Never mind, Willem _fach_; if you are a good boy, perhaps mother will
+let you ride with her to church on Breint next Sunday,' said Rhys in a
+consolatory tone.
+
+'Sure?' asked William, his face brightening.
+
+'Not _sure_, but I will ask her.' And with that the little fellow seemed
+satisfied.
+
+The three youngsters were in bed when Rhys made his suggestion over the
+frugal supper-table. It brought on a sharp controversy, in which Ales
+joined very freely.
+
+Mrs. Edwards was undecided. She 'feared the child would not be strong
+enough to sit through the service after the long ride.'
+
+''Deed, there's no fear o' that,' put in Ales; 'but it's Jonet's turn to
+go to church, before a babe that can't make head or tail of a word
+that's said; and more like take Davy than either. There's no good of
+humouring children.'
+
+'Well, I don't know what queer fancy he has got into that curious head
+of his,' argued Rhys; 'but I think it would be best to humour him this
+time, lest he should be setting off again, and'--
+
+'Humour him, indeed! More like be giving him a good whipping,'
+interrupted Ales. 'There's no end to his queer fancies. It's master
+over us all he will be soon, I'm thinking.'
+
+Evan had been silent. He agreed with Rhys. 'It is never too soon to
+learn the way to church,' said he. 'I will carry him there on my
+shoulders.'
+
+There was a sigh of relief from Mrs. Edwards. 'Ah, then,' she exclaimed,
+'Jonet and Davy can take turns on Breint. If it be fine,' she added. She
+was disinclined to be severe with William at any time, and after his
+long illness she felt unwilling to thwart him. Yet she had misgivings
+about indulging the obstinate self-will, 'so like his poor father's,'
+she told herself, with another sigh. Evan's proposal was hailed as a
+compromise that would, at least, content Rhys.
+
+Not altogether. He was not content that Evan should usurp his
+prerogative. _He_ was the one to carry his brother if he must be
+carried. He considered his own proposal the fittest; but, perhaps,
+ashamed of his foolish jealousy, and remembering the boy's weight, kept
+his opinion to himself.
+
+November though it was, Sunday happened to be fine. Whatever mist there
+might be on the mountain-tops, there was no thick smoke to blacken it,
+and down in the valley it was clearing off.
+
+William and Jonet were in high glee. The little girl had not yet been to
+church, and he had led her to expect something marvellous. After illness
+children pick up their strength more rapidly than adults. The week had
+done wonders for the boy, who had been trotting indoors and out for two
+or three days.
+
+He saw Jonet seated on a pillow in front of his mother on Breint, but
+was very much too much of a man to accept the proffered shoulders of
+Evan.
+
+'Me walk well as Davy and Rhys,' maintained he proudly, and trudged on
+sturdily so long as the road descended and had been clean washed by
+rain. But little legs cannot keep the pace with long ones, any more than
+can short purses with long ones, and after a time the weary little limbs
+were glad of a mount on the big broad shoulders. Yet even then he made
+the excuse of 'uncomfrable shoes an' 'tockings.'
+
+He did not talk much as they went, but cast his eyes from side to side,
+evidently taking note of wayside landmarks. Other people in their Sunday
+best were also on the road, and exchanged greetings in passing. He was
+apparently on the watch for Robert Jones, whose cottage of rough stone
+he recognised at a glance. He expected the 'man' and his donkey to be
+there also, and expressed his disappointment. But it was not until they
+passed under the shade of the dark firs that lined the roadside boundary
+of the vicar's glebe lands, when the lych-gate and the church, with its
+long body and massive square tower, were full in view, that he became
+demonstrative.
+
+Breint had been left at a small inn at the foot of the hill, and then
+William was pleased to dismount from his perch, and, with quite an air
+of patronising superiority, to take his sister by the hand as if to lead
+her up the hill, and over the stone stile to astonish her sight with all
+that had astonished him.
+
+The bells were swinging and ringing over their heads, as they had been
+ringing for nearly half an hour, but they were early, and whilst Mrs.
+Edwards and Rhys walked together to their new grave, William stood still
+with his eyes fixed on the great church tower with childish awe and
+admiration.
+
+Presently he startled Evan with the strange questions: 'How did it get
+there? Did it grow?'
+
+His pointed finger showed to what it referred.
+
+'Grow, child? No. It was built.'
+
+'What is built?'
+
+'Men brought stones, look you, and put them together.'
+
+'How?'
+
+''Deed, William, you do be asking queer questions. I will, maybe, show
+you how it was built next week.'
+
+'Will you? Could me build big church if me was big man?'
+
+''Deed, and perhaps you might help.'
+
+'Then me _will_.'
+
+At that moment, to Evan's relief, Mrs. Edwards caught her little boy by
+the hand to lead him inside, Davy having taken charge of Jonet.
+
+Church, clergyman, congregation, service--all were strange to the girl.
+Her head turned this way and that; now with a smile as she recognised
+some familiar face; but ere long she wearied, and, not being allowed to
+talk, she fell asleep, and slept, with her head against her mother's
+cloak, throughout the sermon.
+
+Not so William. The service was no more intelligible or interesting to
+him, but his unsatisfied, wide-awake eyes were everywhere exploring the
+sacred interior; his little mind lost in large wonder at the length of
+the building and the lofty roof overhead, so much larger to a child's
+imagination than its actuality. And how far his crude speculations went
+must remain a mystery to the end of time.
+
+The service over, Mrs. Edwards, holding Jonet by the hand, joined the
+stream of worshippers on their way to the porch, nothing doubting that
+she was followed by her boys. Once in the wide churchyard, dotted with
+upright slabs of stone, over which two magnificent yew-trees had stood
+sentinel for centuries, the congregation broke up into groups and family
+parties, to greet each other, and discuss alike the affairs of
+individuals, of the nation, and of the widespread parish--so widespread,
+indeed, that families whose ancestors lay all around lived too far apart
+for the meeting of kith and kin, except on the seventh day and on the
+common God's acre. Young people too--cousins and friends--clasped hands
+and blushed, or looked shyly at each other when only that was possible.
+The old vicar, too, when disrobed, would saunter from one group to
+another, shaking hands and inquiring about asthma, rheumatism, crops,
+and sweethearts, with genial impartiality. Here he would admonish one,
+there advise another; now his voice was low in condolence, anon cheery
+in congratulation; and, unless when there was some dispute over tithes,
+none ever turned towards him the cold shoulder.
+
+He greeted the widow thus: 'Ah, Mrs. Edwards, I observe you have brought
+your whole family with you to-day. That is as it should be. "Train up a
+child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart
+from it."'
+
+'Yes, sir,' she answered respectfully, 'I brought them all--Willem'--she
+looked round; 'Rhys, where is Willem?'
+
+'Ah, indeed, yes, where is the little fellow? I heard he had been very
+ill.'
+
+Another assent, another look round, the boy was nowhere within sight.
+But Evan was seen stalking towards the porch, and in a couple of minutes
+out he came leading the boy by the hand.
+
+He had found him standing in front of the communion-table, looking with
+awestruck eyes down the whole length of the church, but he suffered Evan
+to lead him away without demur.
+
+By that time, however, the vicar had gone, and Rhys, who had been round
+the church to look for the absentee, came back cross and ill-tempered.
+He had promised Cate to walk home along with her and her father, and had
+not been too well pleased to see them pass out over the stile beside the
+lych-gate, whilst he was still seeking what he could not find.
+
+'Where had you got to, you young plague?' he cried, with a frown on his
+face, taking the boy by the shoulders and shaking him angrily. 'You are
+always running off somewhere. But I'll thrash you if you do it again.'
+
+The mother interposed, but the harmony of the hour and the peace of the
+sacred place were alike disturbed, and Rhys marched off sullenly in
+advance, hardly caring whether he overtook the weaver and his daughter
+in his ill-humour.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[10] This was the old method of drawing coal and pitmen to the surface,
+until superseded by machinery. Wells and mills were similarly worked.
+And still horses are so employed to draw up yachts on the sea-shore, the
+rope passing round a block.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+THE DAY OF SMALL THINGS.
+
+
+Evan was one of those capable individuals, who, through making good use
+of eyes and ears, can turn their hands readily to anything. In those
+days, before the 'division of labour' had been formulated into a creed,
+the class was more common, and still in remote country places
+individuals of the type may be found. In addition to his field-work he
+had helped the shepherd to mend the stone fence of his sheepfold, and
+had made the ragged roof of the cattle-shed wind and weather proof with
+the heather Rhys had cut down. He had yet to demonstrate his 'all-round'
+faculty in the performance of a promise made, in the first place, to
+Mrs. Edwards, and secondly, to little William.
+
+It was quite a common thing in Wales, as it is in Ireland to this day,
+for the pigs to wander over the farm, or out in the roads, poking their
+snouts into the proprietor's kitchen as a matter of course, and making
+free with root-crops meant for human beings. But as it happened that
+Mrs. Edwards and Evan had experience of a better state of things, they
+were agreed as to its adoption.
+
+Consequently, at the beginning of the week, William, who had begun to
+follow Evan about like a small shadow, was delighted to watch him and
+Lewis clear away a large space among the outbuildings, and Robert Jones
+came two or three times with loads of rough stones from a local quarry,
+which his two patient beasts drew on the singular sleds or sledges that
+did duty for wheeled carts in those mountain regions.
+
+But it was the process of piling and fitting these loose and shapeless
+stones on one another, so as to bind together in a firm and compact wall
+without cement, that kept William dancing with excitement unfelt by
+either passive Davy or Jonet, to whom a stitch more or less in their
+knitting appeared of vastly more importance than the raising of a common
+wall. It might suit William to caper about, or to stagger under a
+voluntary load of stone, and fancy he was helping, it did not much
+interest them.
+
+Yet these children were no blinder than the world at large to 'the day
+of small things.'
+
+But when they noticed the rising walls shaping into two adjoining square
+enclosures with little doorways, across which he placed long, flat
+pieces of wood to support the upper courses of stone, and beheld a
+conical roof rise over each in genuine Welsh form, and learned that the
+two small houses were for the pigs to live in, Davy himself set up an
+exclamation of surprise, as Rhys had done before him. And, no doubt,
+Evan would have been equally surprised had he been told that the beehive
+form was as ancient as the habitations of those early British ancestors
+who fled to the Cambrian mountains for refuge from the Roman and Saxon
+invaders.
+
+Astonishment was exhausted when Williams, the Eglwysilan carpenter, on
+the Wednesday, brought a couple of stout wooden troughs and gates, for
+by that time each conical sty had been supplied with a small walled
+forecourt of its own, and Evan had covered the earthen floors with a
+thick carpet of dry fern for the pigs to lie upon. And whilst the man
+was at work fixing up the gates, he made a broom of ling, and began
+scrubbing the dirty old sow vigorously, to make her fit for her clean
+abode. The pigs grunted and the children laughed. So did Williams, the
+carpenter, to whom pig-scrubbing was a novelty. And so did Rhys, who
+came up the yard at the time, his lip curling with fine scorn.
+
+But Ales, who had lived with her mistress long enough to imbibe her
+advanced notions of cleanliness, and had, besides, a natural vein of
+good sense in her composition, called out from the unshuttered dairy
+window, where she stood drawing a knife through and through the
+newly-churned butter to remove accidental cow-hairs before making up:
+'Them as likes good bacon should be caring for the swine. There's fools
+as would rather be sticking in the mud than mending the roads.'
+
+Having delivered this oracular rebuke to the scorners, she resumed her
+butter-making with renewed energy, none the less for the swift glance
+and smile of approval she had seen on Evan's quickly upturned face.
+
+She and Evan were becoming as good friends as he and William, and he did
+not affect to despise an additional friend on the hearth where Rhys was
+silently hostile. Beyond the bounds of the farm he felt he could defend
+himself, if necessary.
+
+But it would be as easy to defend oneself from a fog as from the
+whisperings of envy or the shrugs and jeers of ignorance.
+
+Already was the voice of prophecy upraised among the Sunday gossips that
+Evan Evans would bring ruin on Brookside Farm with his foolish new ways.
+
+The very carpenter who had taken the order for the woodwork of the new
+sties had tuned saw and plane to laughter, and hammered down his
+conviction that 'Mrs. Edwards would be finding out the folly too late.'
+And listening lag-behinds shook their shock-heads and fell back on the
+old Welsh proverb: 'Ah, a widow's goods will soon be gone.'
+
+When these whisperings reached the widow in the guise of advice from
+well-meaning cousins in all degrees of affinity, she put them down with
+a short, decisive answer: 'Look you, I do have my ways, you do be having
+yours. Keep your own spade for your own farm.'
+
+She wondered how the petty details of new management had reached so many
+ears, and gave Lewis a sharp hint not to gossip about what did not
+concern him. But she never suspected Rhys of dropping the word-seeds
+that rose up around them as ill weeds of speech and thought.
+
+She had seen Rhys kick over wantonly a miniature wall that William was
+attempting to 'build' across the threshold with Evan's refuse stone
+chippings, and she had rebuked him sharply when he flung out angrily the
+small collection the child had brought indoors to 'build' with--just
+such a heap as a modern boy's box of bricks--not taking his pretence of
+'a litter' as an excuse. She had gone so far as to insist on the
+restoration of the 'poor darling's playthings'; but just as she failed
+to hear him delegate to Davy the task of picking up the scattered
+treasures William was crying for, so she failed to suspect her eldest
+born of any ungenerous feeling towards Evan, or any unworthy comment on
+private affairs to strangers.
+
+So long as roads were passable, and skies at all propitious, Mrs.
+Edwards was certain to ride to Caerphilly market, companioned by Rhys,
+less for protection than for his instruction. When Aquarius was reckless
+with his water-pot, Evan alone bestrode Breint, and seldom failed to
+make a good market.
+
+Equally, when Sundays were fine, Mrs. Edwards went to church, and with
+her Rhys and one of the younger ones; Evan's shoulders being always at
+the service of William rather than disappoint the boy. Yet, when the
+broken weather kept the house-mother and children from Sunday service,
+Ales was prompt and ready to accompany Rhys and Evan, even when the
+morning mist became a drizzle or a blinding fog. Umbrellas were unknown,
+and, therefore, unmissed. Cased in her thick, dark-blue cloak, its large
+hood drawn over her low-crowned, black-felt man's hat, and the white
+linen cap under that, she seemed to heed the weather as little as her
+companions in their heavy coats, and generally came back, after her long
+barefooted walk, as rosy and bright as if the sun had been shining
+overhead, and the pathway of velvet sward.
+
+If Rhys started with them, he had a trick of deserting them, and joining
+Owen Griffith and Cate. But he was so far his own master, and, as they
+made no complaint, Mrs. Edwards had no suspicion of his defection, or of
+an intimacy so close as to have become confidential.
+
+And, although Owen had been one of the first to follow Mrs. Edwards'
+lead in the matter of whitewashing and window-glazing, and had been a
+very good friend and adviser to the widow in her hour of sorest need,
+and would have been the first to rise in her defence, neither his wife,
+nor Cate, nor it may be himself, was above the bird-like propensity to
+pick up stray crumbs of confidence, or to drop them for other
+well-meaning, bird-like chatterers to pick up. So it came about that
+little was done on the farm that was not discussed half over the parish.
+
+Yet, notwithstanding proverb or prophecy, the widow's goods were in no
+danger from unthrift.
+
+Whether rain or fair, whosoever went to church or stayed at home,--and
+as the winter advanced the roads became impassable,--no sooner was the
+kitchen cleared after the simple dinner, than the big Welsh Bible was
+laid reverently upon the table, and either Mrs. Edwards or Rhys read a
+chapter or two aloud, she venturing to expound the text to immature
+understandings.
+
+Theologians might have smiled, or shaken their wise heads over her
+expositions, but she was a clear-headed woman, and seldom dived below
+her depth.
+
+She never allowed anything to break into this Sunday custom. It was a
+family bond drawing them all closer together; even the youngest bringing
+their low wooden stools nearer, and listening with attention not common
+where books and other objects of interest are many.
+
+In the wet and snowy winter months, when outdoor labour was restricted
+and the days short, indoor work was at its busiest. Doors would be
+closed to keep out the cold winds, Evan would bring fresh squares of
+peat and fire-balls to keep the hearth aglow. He would take the place of
+Ales at the churn, or would hang up the big porridge-pot, or (if
+cheese-making was about, though there was little cheese made in the
+winter) the great whey-pot, with hearty goodwill to help her. Then a
+candle would be alight, and whilst the cat and dog lay basking in front
+of the fire, all, down to the youngest, would have some useful or
+profitable occupation.
+
+It was then Mrs. Edwards' spinning-wheel went round the swiftest, and
+sang its song of industry the loudest.
+
+In former days her husband had combed the wool, and was teaching Rhys
+how to fling the tufts of greasy and matted wool over the heated iron
+combs set in an upright staff, and to draw them out like the long locks
+of a woman's hair. She had always sorted her own fleeces. We are all
+familiar with the sign of 'The Golden Fleece.' Well, just so the fleece
+of a sheep hangs together after it is sheared away, but in every fleece
+are several different qualities of wool, and the sorting and separating
+those qualities calls for a discriminating touch. This continued to be
+her task, though Evan took the wool-combing in hand, Rhys having an
+occasional turn with the coarser sorts.
+
+Ales, in generous rivalry with her mistress, having no second
+spinning-wheel, took up her distaff, as did half the women in the
+Principality, and set her spindle dancing on the floor as she drew out
+her thread of wool or linen.
+
+Knitting was taken up by any one of them when not otherwise employed.
+
+Thus Rhys plied his knitting-pins with ease and certainty, and the long
+blue or black woollen stockings grew under his fingers, whilst he
+proudly exercised his dead father's function, and taught his sister and
+brothers to read.
+
+It was a tedious occupation; and he might not have taken it up from
+choice, or accepted the office willingly, but the monotonous drawl of
+the learners sounded an undertone to the musical hum of his mother's
+wheel, and set his heart aglow with the feeling that, however and
+wherever Evan had superseded him, in _that_ at least _he_ represented
+his dead father, and was, in his own opinion, the head of the house,
+having authority over the younger ones.
+
+It made him more patient with them than he otherwise might have been.
+And it kept under his reluctance to teach little William his letters,
+when the child, with a laudable desire to look big and do what Davy and
+Jonet did, insisted on an introduction to the painted characters on his
+sister's battledore.[11]
+
+'Me tree years old,' Willie had pleaded, when Rhys asserted that he was
+too young to learn, and when that did not serve, 'Me ask Evan, Evan
+teach me,' was quite sufficient. Rhys drew his dark brows together, but
+he put down his knitting and pointed to the letters without another word
+of objection.
+
+Having thus, as it were, compelled his brother to teach him as a favour,
+he stuck to his self-imposed task with unflagging determination, as if
+he had something to master that must be mastered. And, perhaps, not the
+less persistently because, with all a sharp child's acute perception, he
+saw he was having his own way in spite of Rhys. Having his own way also
+in being free to build walls and houses on the great chest under the
+window with his accumulating bits of stone.
+
+That is, until Ales came at an early hour and swept his building
+materials into a corner, and swept him and Jonet off to bed with equal
+promptitude, barely waiting whilst they said their simple prayers.
+
+Work (the knitting, spinning, and wool-combing) did not cease until the
+general supper-time, about eight o'clock; but conversation lightened it,
+the distance between mistress and servants being scarcely felt or
+perceptible, though one directed and the others obeyed.
+
+Sometimes Evan might have occasion to look after a sick beast, or Ales
+to prepare a warm mash, or the shepherd might come in to report the
+condition of his flock; but so, with little variation, went on the
+routine of the farm, until renewing spring brought fresh activities and
+outdoor occupations.
+
+Spring, too, brought wizened Mr. Pryse, the agent, intrusively prying
+round the farm, his half-shut eyes scanning homestead and tillage with
+eager craving to discover signs of the mismanagement over which rumour
+had been busy.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[11] An oblong board about ten inches long by eight wide, on which the
+alphabets and simple syllables were painted. It was furnished with a
+handle. In many cases the letters were printed and covered with a
+transparent slice of horn. It was then called a hornbook.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+THE BAFFLED AGENT.
+
+
+Mr. Pryse mounted his horse and trotted away from the farm, biting his
+long nails as he went in sheer vexation. His survey had not been as
+satisfactory to himself as he had anticipated. The land was in good
+cultivation, and every one was at work upon it. In one brown field lime
+lay in round, white heaps; compost, from the farmyard, showed in dark
+patches, ready for distribution on the grass land. In one field Evan was
+sowing oats; in another plot, where the spade had turned over the ground
+in well-defined furrows, Rhys was dibbling holes for planting, and Davy
+followed, dropping in something he carried in a small basket, which
+would have baffled the sharp optics of the observer, had he not come
+across Ales, besides a heap of seed potatoes, cutting them up into
+pieces where the eyes were beginning to shoot, and seen Davy bring his
+empty basket for a fresh supply.
+
+'Mrs. Edwards do be in the house, sir,' said the young woman, as a hint
+that his inquisitorial observation was unpleasant; and, after a sneer at
+what he called 'experimental farming,' the hint had been taken.
+
+He had already been on to the moorlands to inspect sheep and goats, and
+put the shepherd through the fine sieve, and had come back over
+newly-sown crops, or springing shoots of green ones, heedless where the
+hoofs of his horse might fall. Had he been lord of the land in full
+possession, he could scarcely have been more indifferent; had he been
+tenant, he might have been more careful. As he neared the homestead, and
+saw barn and outbuildings in good repair, where he had expected
+dilapidation, he pressed his thin lips close together, but when he came
+upon the newly-erected sties, the thin lips spread, and made an abortive
+attempt to curl.
+
+'So that is how you propose to carry on your farm, is it? Aping the
+gentry!' he said, with a sneer, addressing Mrs. Edwards as he
+dismounted, the sound of hoof-beats having brought her to the dairy
+door. 'Do you imagine it will pay _you_ to house your hogs? You will be
+for putting your goats into limbo next.'
+
+[Illustration: 'SO THAT IS HOW YOU PROPOSE TO CARRY ON YOUR FARM?' HE
+SAID, WITH A SNEER.--_See page 106._]
+
+''Deed, and I wish I could,' was her response. 'They do so much damage
+to the trees and thatch.'
+
+'Ugh! And pray where did _you_ see hogs so accommodated? Not in the Vale
+of Glamorgan, I know. We don't house pigs as snugly as our labourers.'
+
+'Sure, sir, it was in England, when I was in service there. And at
+Castella and Llantwit. But, perhaps, sir, you will be coming in and have
+a glass of cider and a bite of bread and cheese?'
+
+He looked snappish enough to take a bite at her--or her farm--as he
+answered: 'England, indeed! Surely Welsh ways are best for Welsh
+people. You will not find English ones prosper here.'
+
+Nevertheless, he followed her into the house, noticing as he went that
+the dairy had been enclosed and partitioned off close to the jamb of the
+outer door, and was shut in by its own door on the left, so as to
+preserve it from the dust of traffic across, and from the open storage
+on the right.
+
+'Is that another of your English ways?' he asked, as he passed on.
+
+'Yes, sir.'
+
+'Humph! And your wheel, and your glass windows, and your potatoes? You
+will not find many imitators, Mrs. Edwards.'
+
+''Deed, sir, and I don't be looking for imitators, whatever; unless,
+perhaps, my children and my servants may be for teaching theirs, as I do
+be teaching them.'
+
+She had spread a clean, homespun linen cloth on the table under the
+cheese and the jug of cider, even though she disliked the agent and
+suspected his errand. Private feeling must not interfere with
+hospitality.
+
+He, for his part, accepted her attentions as a right, making as free
+with the cheese and bread and cider as if they had been ordered at an
+inn, with the relishing consciousness they would not have to be paid
+for.
+
+'Perhaps,' said he, after a good draught of the cider, 'you learned to
+make _that_ in England too?' the old ugly smile on his thin lips.
+
+'Partly, sir. In Herefordshire.'
+
+Narrowed as were the slits between his eyelids, nothing escaped his
+roving eyes.
+
+'What's that?' he ejaculated, pointing with his riding whip, as he rose
+to depart, to a rudely-constructed tower William was raising on the oak
+chest with his stone chips. The boy had backed into a corner in front of
+his sister Jonet, as if he recognised a foe in the stranger. Shyness he
+had none.
+
+His mother explained. 'Willem's building a Tower of Babil.'
+
+'Humph! If he can do that, he might be set to something useful. There,'
+said Mr. Pryse, 'that will find him employment,' and, with a stroke of
+his whip, he swept down the boy's tower, a malicious chuckle shaking his
+skinny throat as he strode out of the kitchen to mount his horse.
+
+As he rode away he heard a boy's passionate scream behind him, and felt
+the sharp pelting of a couple of small stones between his shoulders. He
+turned round in his saddle, and shook his whip-hand at the child, who,
+with face aflame, cried after him--
+
+[Illustration: HE TURNED AND SHOOK HIS WHIP-HAND AT THE CHILD.--_See
+page 110._]
+
+'You bad man! bad man, you!'
+
+But he only chuckled, as if the incident amused him.
+
+His satisfaction was but temporary, and before he had well reached the
+level he began biting his nails with vexation, for he saw only signs of
+improved husbandry, nothing on which he could pounce as betokening ruin.
+
+After a few days came a more welcome visitor to the farm, in the guise
+of a travelling packman, with his string of mules, on his rounds to
+collect the stockings, flannels, blankets, and linseys, knitted and
+woven in the farms and cottages scattered among the mountains or grouped
+in villages. For these he was willing to pay in coin, but he preferred
+to exchange for the English goods with which his beasts were laden, not
+so much of ribbon and laces, gaily-coloured gown-pieces, or cheap
+trinkets, as of useful hardware, knives, forks, spoons, crockery, pots
+and pans, needles, pins, tapes, and buttons; such goods as were in
+general demand for household use. Very rarely did he display any more
+gorgeous drapery than a silken neckerchief, or a bright ribbon for a
+bow. The Welsh still clung to their national costume, and, with few
+exceptions, were clothed entirely in woollen of native growth and
+manufacture. Still he carried hats with him, and the flannels or duffle
+collected in one part he could dispose of elsewhere.
+
+The jingling bells on his leading mule proclaimed his arrival. There was
+a general rush to surround him and inspect his wares, the children
+crowding in with the rest, and the clack of tongues was indescribable.
+
+His periodical visits were the great events of the year. The first duty
+was that of hospitality. Oaten bread and cheese and milk were set before
+him, and the winter's pile of knitted stockings and mittens brought out
+whilst he refreshed. These, as the man knew of old, had to be examined,
+priced, and paid for before Mrs. Edwards would allow one of his packs or
+panniers to be unloaded. Then ensued the bargaining for bright-coloured
+mugs and bowls; there was no need of teacups and saucers, for no one
+drank tea. It was almost an unknown luxury there. Jonet and William
+were favoured with a mug apiece, adorned with waves of bright blue on a
+yellow ground. Rhys had a new hat. Davy plucked at his mother's skirts
+and reminded her that he was to be finally breeched when the packman
+came round, and he was not disappointed.
+
+Something was wanted and bought for house and everybody.
+
+Ales, who had smartened herself up of late, invested in a
+bright-coloured cotton kerchief or shawl to be worn crossed over her
+short jacket, and a stout comb to keep her tangled locks in order; the
+need for which she learned by surveying her own good looks in a
+red-framed looking-glass Evan had given to her--a glass not larger than
+his own right hand, but it was better as a mirror than the broken water
+under the spring, and might be taken as an earnest of his especial
+goodwill.
+
+The ensuing rent was paid duly; and, in spite of prophecies and
+forecasts, it was as duly paid in succeeding years.
+
+But Mr. Pryse grew no more civil; indeed, he seemed ever on the watch
+for some pretext to turn the widow and her children off the farm she had
+done so much to improve. He had never forgiven Edwards for saying of
+him, 'he was too grasping to be altogether honest,' and, when the farmer
+was drowned, rejoiced as only an evil-minded curmudgeon could do.
+
+It was no satisfaction to him, as years went by, to see one whitewashed
+cottage after another stand out like a pearl among emerald fields and
+foliage, and know whose house had been the model. Nor could he hear of
+Owen Griffith and others venturing on a potato crop without a sneer. And
+he positively snarled when he heard the prices the widow's piglings and
+bacon brought in the market. Not that he ascribed the prosperity of Mrs.
+Edwards to her own good management. No; he set that down to Evan Evans
+and his previous initiation on the Castella estate. He owed the
+farm-servant a grudge accordingly. He rejoiced when he heard that Rhys
+regarded Evans as an interloper, and never missed an opportunity, by
+subtle sneer or insinuation, to fan the supposed antagonism into an
+active flame.
+
+As years rolled on, and he saw the down of incipient manhood darken on
+the lip of Rhys, ever his mother's escort on rent-days, his innuendoes
+became broader and stronger. There was an air of self-sustained
+mastership about the sturdy young fellow that suggested ripe soil for
+his weeds.
+
+'Humph!' said he, when Rhys was about eighteen; 'I should have thought a
+stout chap like you might have saved your mother the cost of a _head
+man_.'
+
+At a later date: 'Well, young man, I never expected your father's son to
+submit to a servant's rule so long.'
+
+Had there been any _submission_ in the case, Rhys would have taken fire
+at once. No hints would have been needed to provoke rebellion that would
+have led to the ousting of Evan. But the latter had never presumed to
+_give orders_, and, of late, had deferred to Rhys as his 'young
+master.'
+
+Whatever suggestions he made in farming matters were made to Mrs.
+Edwards. Command rested with _her_.
+
+Then Rhys had conceived a mortal antipathy to the agent that first
+rent-paying day, and he suspected a sinister motive in every word that
+fell from the ill-natured, thin lips.
+
+And it had been made a condition, by the shrewd widow, that Rhys should
+bridle his tongue, and allow nothing said by Mr. Pryse to provoke hasty
+reply, or she must take Evan in his stead as witness. Yet it was hard
+sometimes for either to listen quietly to the agent's coarse and
+insulting speeches, of which his noble employer had no suspicion.
+
+Some of his sharpest bullets were fired from a double-barrelled gun.
+'Well, Mrs. Edwards, I hear you and Evan Evans are about to make a match
+of it at last. How soon is this fine young man of yours to have a
+step-father?'
+
+A frown darkened the brow of Rhys, and an indignant retort was on his
+tongue, but, before a second word was uttered, the frown changed to a
+significant smile at a look from his mother.
+
+It was an open secret at the farm that Ales and Evan were courting, and
+only waited until they had saved enough money to set up housekeeping and
+farming for themselves, as husband and wife.
+
+Had Mr. Pryse but known it, there _was_ an element of disquiet and
+rebellion at Brookside Farm, of which he might have taken advantage.
+
+But he never gave a second thought to the boy whose walls he had
+levelled so wantonly. He had not seen that same boy, his passion over,
+pick up every scattered bit of stone, and patiently raise his walls once
+more.
+
+He had no suspicion how the strong will and pertinacity of that three
+years child would come later into collision with the mastership of his
+eldest brother, or the important part these stone chips would play in
+William's life, or how they might affect the welfare of the whole
+county, or make an enduring name when his own was forgotten.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+FRIENDS AND BROTHERS.
+
+
+There was no necessity for Mr. Pryse to suggest 'employment' for little
+William. In the last century, and far into this, children were set to
+work and expected to earn their own living at a wofully early age, and
+that long before machinery came into use and drove them into factories
+to be the slaves of brutal overseers, who scored their six and eight
+year old backs with weals from whip or stick on the slightest
+provocation. William Hutton, the historian, tells how he, a small child
+of seven years, was apprenticed, in 1730, to an overseer of Lombe's silk
+mill, in Derby, how he had to wear high pattens to reach the machine,
+had to rise at five in the depth of winter and hurry to work, slipping
+down on the ice as he ran, and how he was beaten till his back was all
+festering sores. And this was no uncommon case. I, who write this, can
+remember when the little barefooted children went to the cotton
+factories and print works at five in the morning, and worked till seven
+or eight at night.
+
+The boys and girls of this generation have no conception how children
+were trained and treated a few generations back. Not the poor only. The
+children of even rich parents had to endure painful punishments both at
+school and at home, and were fed sparely on coarse food for their
+health's sake. The late noble Lord Shaftesbury related how he and a
+sister were well-nigh starved in their childhood through the negligence
+of parents and servants.
+
+History and biography teem with such instances. So that when I state
+that William Edwards and Jonet were sent into their mother's fields to
+weed, and pick up stones, and scare the birds away from newly-sown lands
+before the boy was six years old, I cast no reflection on his mother,
+who had no experience of a different state of things.
+
+Nay, for her time, she was enlightened, and being a woman with good
+natural feeling, she was careful they were not taxed beyond their
+strength, as she and her husband had been; but that children should
+spend their hours in play, when they were old enough to be of use, had
+never dawned on her imagination. She considered she was doing her duty
+by them in setting them early to work, especially as she was careful
+they should be taught to read also.
+
+Davy worked in field and farm, alongside Rhys, without a murmur of
+hardship. And when Jonet was first set to feed the chickens, or to look
+for the eggs of hens that laid away, to pull peas or beans, or to shell
+the latter for the pot (peas were boiled in the pod), imitative William,
+always at her heels, and wanting to show his own cleverness, set himself
+to do likewise.
+
+And so long as he set himself voluntarily to work to assist Jonet, he
+was busy as a bee, and proud of his doings. Or when his mother or Ales
+sent him hither or thither to fetch or carry, or directed him to perform
+small services, he was as willing and amenable to order as most boys of
+his age. But no sooner did Rhys take advantage of his precocious
+industry, and exercise an assumed right to command, and bid him do this
+or that, than William began to rebel.
+
+He was docile enough to his brother as a teacher. He was more eager to
+learn to read than Rhys was to instruct. Davy and Jonet took their
+spelling and reading lessons as compulsory tasks--Davy placidly, and
+Jonet with uneasy disfavour--but William with an absolute desire to
+_know_.
+
+He no sooner discovered that the Ten Commandments painted up in the
+church, and the inscriptions on the upright gravestones in the
+churchyard, were just made up of the alphabetical characters on his
+painted battledore, and that the big Bible his mother read aloud to them
+was all a mixture of the same letters, than a craving to penetrate the
+mystery of these combinations seized him. He felt he had achieved
+something when he made his first grand discovery on a headstone taller
+than himself; but when, at his request, Evan read out the inscription,
+his perplexity and curiosity increased.
+
+It was singular to see the little fellow--he was short for his
+age--Sunday by Sunday tracing letter or word, with tiny finger, on some
+grey old slab, while his seniors were gossiping all around.
+
+'I tell you what,' said Rhys to him one Sunday when so employed, 'you
+might have been born in a stone quarry. I'm sure you ought to live in
+one, you do be so fond of the dirty rubbish.'
+
+'What's a stone quarry?' put in William, with wide-open eyes.
+
+'Oh, bother! It's a place where stone grows,' was the impatient reply.
+
+'Grows like trees?' and the wondering eyes of the six years old querist
+opened still wider.
+
+'Oh, what a plague you do be! No, grows like coal;' and away strode Rhys
+to avoid further questioning--a common but very unsatisfactory way of
+dealing with an inquiring child.
+
+'I'll be asking Robert Jones, he will tell me,' said William to himself.
+'Rhys do be caring more for Cate Griffith than for me, whatever,' his
+aggrieved looks following his well-grown brother as he strode over the
+grassy mound to join the weaver's wife and daughter under the
+patriarchal yew-tree, with all the importance of incipient manhood.
+
+The following day William was missing from the farm, but as this was not
+uncommon, only slight uneasiness was felt until evening.
+
+The boy had long before struck up a strange friendship with the
+red-haired peat-cutter, who, in fulfilment of his early promise, had
+taken him on his ass when bound to a colliery across the river for culm,
+and there let him see the horse plodding round and round in a circle to
+wind up coal and grimy colliers from the dark, deep pit-shaft, and let
+down the empty tubs to be refilled. There the child had looked round in
+wonder at the great black heaps of coal, and at the half-naked children
+sent down the terrible dark hole, to work in the bowels of the mine, as
+Robert Jones explained to him.
+
+Later he had taken the little fellow to see how peat was cut with long,
+narrow, flat shovels, 'shaped like a marrow-spoon,' from the boggy top
+of Eglwysilan Mountain. And when his sled was loaded, he had placed the
+child before him on the end of the sled, and gone sliding down the steep
+mountain-side with him swiftly and securely, to the youngster's infinite
+delight. He was too young to dream of danger, and to the man, long
+practice had made the perilous descent safe and easy, swift as was the
+downward motion, and sharp as was the jerk at the bottom. And many a
+ride on the turf-cutter's sled did William have after that.
+
+The man had no children of his own, and, perhaps, that was the reason he
+took so kindly to the lad; answering his strange questions to the best
+of his untutored ability, and frequently giving him a mount on one of
+his patient beasts between tubs or panniers when going for loads, or
+carrying them for sale not too far away. To him the child could open all
+his wondering heart, fearing neither repulse nor ridicule, of which he
+had too much at home; and so their friendship grew.
+
+On that particular Monday morning, Robert Jones had started on a long
+round, and nothing remained for the young inquirer, who had sought him
+at his ordinary haunts, but to limp homeward in the afternoon, hungry,
+footsore, and disappointed.
+
+Cate Griffith, returning from the brook with a pitcher of water on her
+head and another in her hand, caught sight of him as he was passing her
+father's door.
+
+'Name o' goodness!' she cried, 'what brings you here this time o' day?
+Look you, father, here's little Willem Edwards!'
+
+The weaver, then changing his shuttle, looked out from his casement
+window, and in two minutes was at the door questioning the wanderer.
+
+Without any shyness or reservation the boy told where he had been, and
+for what; his brother's initiative remarks with the rest.
+
+Cate, now a rosy-cheeked, buxom lass on the borderland of womanhood,
+began to laugh outright, as she had often laughed before when Rhys
+amused her with some story of William's out-of-the-way questions.
+
+Her father checked her sternly. 'What do you be laughing at?'
+
+''Deed, he do be so queer. Rhys do say he be always at play with bits of
+stones. And now he asks if they do grow like trees. Oh, Willem, you are
+droll!'
+
+Again her laugh broke out. William, child though he was, crimsoned to
+the roots of his brown hair. He seemed to comprehend that Rhys had made
+a jest of him, and no one is more sensitive to ridicule than a child of
+tender years.
+
+'Carry your pitchers into the house, and stay there!' cried her father.
+Then turning to the boy, who hesitated whether to linger or walk on, he
+said kindly--
+
+'Never mind Cate, my little man, she talks foolishness. Come and sit on
+this bench beside me. I'll try to serve instead of Robert Jones.'
+
+William's face lit up. He climbed to a seat by the weaver's side,
+content to find he was no longer laughed at. And very intently he
+listened to Owen's simple explanation that the mountain was nearly all
+stone, and that a quarry was the place where strong men broke away the
+stone for building walls and houses, and that the mountains had been
+there ever since God created the world, so that he did not think stone
+grew. And if Owen's was not a learned geological definition, it was all
+the better adapted to juvenile comprehension. But, simple as it was, a
+shower of whys and hows were rained on the exponent during its course.
+
+Then William rose to depart, but something in his face, or in his
+lagging gait, or a casual word, caused the weaver to interrogate the
+boy. This elicited the admission that he had strayed away from home in
+the morning, and that no one knew, and, moreover, that he was very
+hungry.
+
+Owen looked grave. He called for Cate to bring some bread and a cup of
+milk, and began to read the boy a lesson on the inconsiderate wrong he
+had done, and the anxiety he would cause his mother.
+
+'You should never leave home without permission, Willem. Your poor
+mother will be fretting and crying for fear lest you have fallen over
+the rocks, or got into the river and been drowned, or lost your way on
+the mountain as you did four years ago, when Evan found you asleep under
+the Druids' rocking-stone. It is very cruel and wicked for a child to
+stray from home without leave.'
+
+William hung his head. 'I did not mean any harm,' he began; 'but,' in a
+changed tone, 'what's the Druids?'--
+
+'Oh, you're here, are you? A fine hunt you have given us all, you young
+plague,' came in an angry shout from Rhys, who had crossed the brook and
+was advancing at a run.
+
+William's question died away unanswered. He got down from his stone seat
+inclined to be penitent for his misbehaviour. Owen Griffith had shown
+him that he had done wrong. He might have gone home and told his mother
+he was sorry. But Rhys, who had been as much alarmed at his absence as
+the rest, now he was found, caught him by the shoulder and shook him
+roughly.
+
+'Look you, if you do be running off again, I shall give you a good
+thrashing.'
+
+''Deed you won't,' was thrown back at him defiantly by William, whose
+penitence was at an end.
+
+'Won't I? You'll see. Sure, I've half a mind to do it now.'
+
+'Nay, nay,' interposed Griffith. 'Willem is sorry. He did not know he
+was doing wrong.'
+
+'Then he will have to learn. It's quite time he made himself useful.
+Jonet did before she was his age. And so did I. We can have no idlers
+on our farm, whatever. Ah, Cate, is that you?' His voice had brought the
+girl to the open window. She leaned out, blushing like a peony. He
+joined her, and said something which made her giggle and provoked reply.
+Then ensued some whispering and laughter. Rhys apparently forgot all
+about William and his mother's anxiety whilst occupied so pleasantly,
+for there was no doubt Cate had more than a third-cousinly attraction
+for him, and chance opportunities for seeing her except on Sundays were
+not frequent.
+
+When his errand recurred to him, William had disappeared, and
+notwithstanding Rhys' longer legs, the fatigue of the small ones, the
+gathering dusk, and the steepness of the ascending path to the farm, the
+truant crossed the threshold first.
+
+At once uneasiness resolved itself into displeasure. He was scolded on
+all sides, and threatened with the loss of a supper if ever he ventured
+to give them such a fright again.
+
+'I wanted Robert Jones,' was all the excuse he made. The scolding was
+received with stolid silence, which was called sullenness.
+
+Yet he had not forgotten Owen's picture of his mother's distress, or his
+grave reproof for straying away, and had he been differently received,
+he might have been contrite and sued for pardon.
+
+It is a difficult matter, even in these analytic days, to search out the
+inner workings of the child-mind, or to understand all that influences
+wayward moods. How were those rudely-cultivated farmers to penetrate
+beneath the surface, to see the undeveloped oak in the immature acorn?
+
+'Robert Jones do be spoiling that boy,' said Mrs. Edwards, when the
+child was in bed. 'I wonder what he wanted with the man?'
+
+'Wanted? Sure, he wanted to ask if stones do grow like trees,' said
+Rhys, in a tone of impatient scorn. 'It was only last week he did be
+asking me if the trees made the wind, because it was always windy when
+the trees tossed about.'
+
+'Well, _don't_ they?' queried stolid Davy, amidst a roar of laughter, in
+which even the mother joined.
+
+'Now, don't you be as silly as Willem. I never before knew you ask such
+a foolish question,' said Rhys dogmatically.
+
+'No, Davy,' explained his mother, without stopping her busy wheel, 'it
+is the wind that blows the trees about,'--an answer which sufficed for
+him. He was not curious to learn what caused the winds, or whence they
+came, as William had been. He accepted facts as they were, untroubled by
+vain speculations.
+
+Undoubtedly William--the father's namesake, her youngest born--was the
+mother's darling, in spite of his odd ways. And however cross she might
+have been overnight, in the morning, when the others had dispersed, she
+took him to task for straying away without leave; not angrily, but
+sadly, showing him the trouble he was likely to cause, and the anxiety
+she had had, remembering the time when he was lost before.
+
+It was a very effectual supplement to Owen Griffith's lecture; the
+sensitive boy's feelings were touched. He threw his arms around her
+neck, begged forgiveness, and promised the best of behaviour for the
+future.
+
+Alas, for a child's promises! William went to work beside Jonet like a
+little man, helped in seed-time and harvest, and won commendations from
+Ales and Evan. But he had his dreamy hours; he continued to pile up
+stones in odd corners, and was alternately ridiculed and rebuked by
+Rhys, whose interference he resented.
+
+This went on for about two years, trying the patience of both, and then
+came a more serious outbreak.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+A MEMORABLE ENCOUNTER.
+
+
+William's rebellion had begun to show itself in sullen disregard of his
+brother's orders. He was always active and willing when his mother or
+Evan called him--Davy might convey a message, but never had an
+independent order to give--he was Jonet's obedient bondslave, but when
+Rhys demanded his services or attention he generally turned a deaf ear.
+For this, Rhys--who considered his ten years' seniority quite a warranty
+for control as his mother's deputy and his dead father's
+representative--took him to task imperiously, not with any desire to be
+knowingly overbearing, but from a stern sense of his own duty to a lazy
+lad.
+
+At length, one bright day in early spring, when William was little more
+than nine years of age, he stood lingering after the midday meal close
+beside the stone gate-posts of a field where Davy and Jonet were already
+busy weeding a freshly springing crop of corn. His arms rested upon the
+coping of the wall with his chin upon them, whilst he, looking down into
+the fertile vale below--where glimpses of the shining river were
+discernible like twinkling stars, through the tender green shoots which
+veiled the swaying boughs on its densely-wooded banks--seemed lost in a
+dreamy mist of speculative thought. The boy's reverie was rudely broken.
+
+'Now then, lazyback! What do you be doing there?' called out Rhys, who
+carried a spade on one shoulder and a wicker basket in his hand, which
+he tossed down at his brother's feet. No answer coming, he called out
+again, 'What do you be doing there?'
+
+'I do be thinking,' came composedly from William.
+
+'Thinking, indeed! I wish you would be thinking about your work. What
+can you have to think about, whatever?'
+
+''Deed, nobody knows my thinks,' replied the boy, without turning round.
+
+'You will very soon know _my thinks_,' retorted Rhys, 'if you do not
+pick up your basket, and get to your weeding. You are one of the "late
+and lazy who will never be rich." Come, stir you.' And, as if to enforce
+obedience, Rhys raised his disengaged hand and struck the other a sharp
+blow across the shoulders.
+
+At once William turned round, his cheeks and eyes aflame. Rhys thought
+he was about to strike him back again.
+
+Instead, he gave the empty basket a kick that sent it flying over the
+ridges, and was out at the narrow gateway in an instant, with a defiant
+air that seemed to dare Rhys to lay hands upon him again, or attempt to
+draw him back.
+
+That day he was seen no more upon the farm until nightfall, when he was
+sent to bed supperless as a punishment.
+
+He was up betimes in the morning, and had the fire alight before any one
+else was astir. He was having a wash at the spring when Ales came into
+the farmyard.
+
+'Name o' goodness!' exclaimed she, 'what's got you out of bed so soon?
+Want your breakfast, I suppose?'
+
+William nodded in assent, on his way to the common towel.
+
+'Do you think you be deserving any?'
+
+'Does Rhys be deserving any?'
+
+Ales had a proverb ready, 'Who does well, deserves well.'
+
+'Is it doing well to call names and be striking his brother?'
+
+Ales had no direct answer to that. 'Rhys says you are idle and should be
+made to work. You do be playing with stones when you should be weeding
+or knitting. _He_ does always be working hard,' she replied evasively.
+
+Prompt was the retort, 'A big man should work, I will do better work
+than Rhys when I am as big. 'Deed I will.'
+
+This conversation had taken place during the hasty ablutions of Ales,
+who had latterly grown uncommonly anxious to present 'a shining morning
+face' to Evan when he appeared. As she combed out her hair at the
+diminutive looking-glass he had bought her, as a hint, and which hung
+beside the storehouse door, she began in an insinuating tone--
+
+'And where did you be going yesterday, Willem? Did you be with Robert
+Jones?'
+
+'Never be you minding,' said the boy, walking past with a pitcher of
+water for the porridge. And no further information could she or any one
+else extract from him.
+
+After that, whenever Rhys and he came into collision he disappeared, and
+none could say whither he went or with whom. Cate or Owen Griffith might
+see him pass the cottage door, and exchange a 'good-day' greeting, but
+beyond that his wanderings were unknown.
+
+In a mountainous parish like Eglwysilan, where was no village community,
+where farms and cottages were mostly solitary and far apart, there was
+little chance of encountering many strollers out of the main highway,
+except on market-days.
+
+Wandering aimlessly in his blind passion, on the day when Rhys had
+struck him, hardly noting the way he went, he found himself all on a
+sudden on what appeared to be a short, grass-grown roadway, bordered on
+both sides by upright blocks of stone, more stunted and less shapely
+than the slabs in the churchyard, but planted there with so much method
+in their irregular intervals, they might indeed have been dwarf guards
+to some great giant turned suddenly to stone by the magic art of a still
+greater necromancer of the olden time, as he had heard.
+
+Such legends were common on the domestic hearth. So that, although it
+was a bright spring afternoon, an eerie feeling crept over the
+passionate boy, especially when he found himself within a wide circle of
+such stones, surrounding, in double file, a huge angular mass of like
+stone, narrowing downwards from a flat top, capped by a second stone,
+and delicately poised on the rounded point of a small conical base in a
+hollowed depression of the natural rock, and in some sort bearing out
+the simile of the petrified giant's throne.
+
+As William looked upon this unshapely mass, some dreamy recollection
+floated through his mind of having visited the spot before, when the
+stones had seemed alive, and making mouths at him. Without nearing the
+central stone, but keeping his eye upon it, he walked slowly round
+within the inner circle, and, as he went discovered a second path
+(leading north) corresponding with the one by which he had entered from
+the south.
+
+Then it dawned upon him this must indeed be the spot where he had lain
+down faint and tired, when he was, oh, such a little boy, and had been
+so frightened by the grim aspect of the stones, as the dark night had
+come on, and he could not rise to get away.
+
+Soon he ventured to touch the large central stone that had terrified him
+before by giving way on the pressure of his tiny hand. It swayed and
+rocked to and fro, and he drew back instinctively, but it did not fall.
+And now he knew it surely for the great rocking-stone, and no longer
+feared that it would fall and crush him so long as he was good and true,
+for so the legend ran.
+
+But now other doubts and fears oppressed him. These would be the very
+Druid-stones Owen Griffith had named, and Robert Jones had warned him
+not to seek, lest some great harm should come to him.
+
+Was it true there were once men called Druids, and did they come to life
+at midnight and nod to the moon, and to the big nodding-stones? Robert
+Jones and Ales both said they did, though they had never ventured there
+at midnight to see. They only looked like ill-shaped stones, too little
+for men. But had they not made faces at him when he was a bit of a baby
+crying there in the dark?
+
+The boy's heart sank. He was not proof against the grim and weird
+recollection. He took to his heels and ran out of the memory-haunted
+circle by the stone-guarded avenue next to him, nor stopped until he had
+left the desolate and barren spot far behind.
+
+But where was he? That was not the way towards home. He stood on a wild
+heath, high above the valley of the Taff, with the mountain rising and
+stretching far away on his right hand, with here and there labourers
+tilling the red-brown upland fields, and children at work beside them,
+as he should have been working 'but for Rhys,' he told himself.
+
+He did not know, and could not see it, but the Merthyr Tydvil road, such
+as it was, lay sunk between the heath and the receding mountain. He had
+only to gain that, and turn completely round, to find his way homeward.
+
+He looked to the wooded declivity on his left, where birds were calling
+to their mates under the swelling pinky buds or pale-green opening fans,
+and the odour of wood violets came sweetly fresh in every breath he
+drew. A rabbit rose and scuttered past him, and made for the underwood,
+where the golden crosiers of trooping ferns were uncurling in their
+beauty. The river ran far below, ran with an inviting rush. One moment,
+and the boy had plunged into the wood. 'He would _not_ hurry home to be
+struck by Rhys.'
+
+He could easily find his way back with the river to guide him.
+
+So, now slipping, now catching at the trunk of a tree to maintain a
+foothold, he scrambled nearer to the river's brink, where was no more
+perceptible path than what had been made by intruders like himself. Once
+there he fancied the water was more than commonly disturbed; it was here
+and there flecked with foam and swirled in eddies. 'Surely the river
+must be in flood,' he said to himself.
+
+A little way off a well-dressed young man was seated on a stone, fishing
+with rod and line.
+
+William had no shyness. 'Why does the water make such a noise to-day,
+and be so rough?' he asked.
+
+'Don't you know? It is from the falls. The river is always noisy here.
+It is louder higher up the stream.'
+
+'Oh,' said William; 'what are the falls?'
+
+'Indeed you had better go on a bit farther and see for yourself, my lad.
+But be careful how you go.'
+
+The spirit of adventure was on the boy. He thanked the man and did 'go
+on,' until he stood still with amazement, for there the full river came
+leaping down, in broken falls, from rock to intercepting rock, some
+fifteen feet in all; but they might have been fifty for what the
+home-kept boy knew.
+
+Strange is the fascination of living, leaping water. He stood there
+gazing spellbound, lost in admiration, listening to the tumultuous
+uproar, as the swift waters came rushing and flashing downwards,
+striking themselves against the rocks into angry foam that William
+mentally compared to suds when Ales was washing, only he never had seen
+washing on so large a scale. If there were finer cascades in the world
+he had not seen them. He was fascinated by what he did see, and lingered
+long.
+
+'I wonder if Rhys or Davy ever saw these falls?' he said to himself;
+'they never told _me_. They tell _me_ nothing. But I will find out
+things for myself.'
+
+The fisherman was rising from his stone when William again drew near. He
+had his rod and basket in hand prepared to go.
+
+'Well, what do you think of the falls?'
+
+'Oh, 'deed, and they was wonderful--and terrible. I was thinking how
+soon they would drown a man.'
+
+'Yes, or a boy either. Which way are you going?'
+
+'By the riverside, through the wood as far as the ford.'
+
+'That will not be safe at this hour. You might slip into the stream. You
+had best go back the way you came.'
+
+'I--I dare not,' stammered William.
+
+'Dare not? Yet you are not afraid to go through these pathless woods by
+the riverside at dusk, though a false step might be fatal. Come along
+with me; I'll see you on a safe road.'
+
+William followed through the ascending wood cautiously as before, ready
+to brave anything with such a companion.
+
+The sun had not set when they stood upon the heath above, and then the
+stranger inquired--
+
+'Well, my boy, of what are you afraid?'
+
+'Of going past the Druids' stones, sir.'
+
+'So you are superstitious? What harm can a few old stones do to a stout
+boy like you?' was asked with a broad smile.
+
+William felt half-ashamed of the confession, how he had been lost when
+quite little, and had seen the stones make faces at him, adding the
+current stories he had heard, and his fright that afternoon.
+
+By this time they were descending a slope from the barren heath to the
+Merthyr Tydvil highway, thus avoiding close proximity to the dreaded
+circle, although the roadway passed on a lower level. As they went, the
+stranger did his best to disabuse the boy's mind of his foolish terrors,
+and gave him to understand that long before there were any Christian
+churches in the land, or any Christian clergymen, the Druids were the
+priests, the priests of Baal, and set up those stones for their temples.
+Yet he said nothing of their horrid rites or human sacrifices, lest he
+should confirm the boy's dread of the stones.
+
+William listened with wide-open ears, putting in a question here and
+there, as was his wont, and, to his delight, receiving intelligent
+replies adapted to the capacity of a thinking child. He was very anxious
+to know something more about the priests of Baal, but, after a brief
+identification of them with the idolatrous worshippers of the sun, the
+stranger, having ascertained that he could read, referred him to the
+Bible for further information.
+
+They had reached the well-trodden turning to the ford. The sun had by
+this time set, and twilight was closing in.
+
+'I presume our ways part here,' observed the tall stranger. 'Good-bye.
+Do not forget what I have told you. Brave boys who fear God, and do
+their duty to their fellows, do not dread the aspect of a few grey old
+stones.'
+
+'I'm not afraid of stones, sir. I've got a heap, and I build with them.
+But Rhys kicks them over and says I waste my time.'
+
+'So you build with stones, do you? And, pray, what do you build?' asked
+the gentleman, with a comical smile, unseen in the twilight. 'Do you
+think you could build a bridge over this treacherous river? You would do
+good service if you could,' he added, _sotto voce_.
+
+William felt abashed. He had an uncomfortable suspicion he was being
+laughed at.
+
+'I am only a boy, sir. I can only _try_ to build. But when I am a man,
+Rhys shall see!'
+
+'And who is Rhys?' put the other, resuming his walk when he found the
+boy did not turn towards the cottage by the ford.
+
+'Rhys is my big brother. But, if you please, sir, what do be a
+_bridge?_'
+
+Without evincing any surprise at the ignorance of a boy of his class
+and age, who could not have travelled far from home, the other answered
+promptly, 'A bridge is a roadway built _over_ a river so that people may
+walk or ride across without wetting their feet. Bridges are sometimes
+built of wood, sometimes of stone or brick. A bridge is sadly wanted
+hereabouts, my boy. I narrowly escaped being swept away at the ford this
+morning.'
+
+William drew in his breath. 'Oh-h-h! Would a bridge have saved my father
+from being drowned?'
+
+'It would preserve any one who had occasion to cross.'
+
+'Then I'll build one when I'm a man, 'deed I will,' came promptly.
+
+The stranger, amused by William's earnestness, put some few questions,
+in his turn, respecting his father's death, his name, and occupation,
+ascertained whence arose his peculiar fancy for building, and suggested
+that if the church had attracted him so much he should contrive to visit
+the ruins of Caerphilly Castle, which he would find much more wonderful
+as a building; adding that he would have to cross a drawbridge to get
+into the castle.
+
+'Why, mother and Rhys go to Caerphilly market every week. They never
+told me of the wonderful castle, whatever! But I'll go myself,' cried
+William, his imagination fired, and his indignation rising under the
+supposition that he had been kept wilfully in the dark. It did not occur
+to him that familiarity had taken the wonder out of the ancient pile for
+his elders.
+
+They had reached the foot of the steep ascent to the farm, which
+William pointed out with some pride as his home, and there the
+stranger--who said he was on his way to the vicarage--took leave of him,
+saying that his name was Morris, and perhaps they might meet again some
+day, for he was interested in stone, but it was ironstone and not for
+building. However, before he went, he gave the boy a word or two of
+advice.
+
+'Remember,' said he, 'you have a character to build before you think of
+building houses and churches, and a _boy_ may begin to build that.'
+
+'How?' was asked, William's grey eyes opening wide.
+
+'By fearing God, and doing his duty. But there are bad characters as
+well as good ones, and every act of disobedience, of untruthfulness, of
+indolence, goes to build up the evil in place of the good.'
+
+He had left William something to ponder. That was a memorable
+encounter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+CAERPHILLY CASTLE.
+
+
+A country vicar in the last century bore little or no resemblance to a
+clergyman of any status in this. He was a much more homely and
+patriarchal character, especially among the Welsh mountains.
+
+Whatever his learning or his eloquence, he did not hesitate to till his
+own glebe-lands, or to perform offices from which the pastor of to-day
+would shrink as derogatory to his cloth. As a rule, his stipend was
+small, and necessity compelled him so to labour. He came, however,
+nearer to his flock in consequence.
+
+When Mrs. Edwards, the Sunday following William's escapade, besought the
+Rev. John Smith to admonish her refractory son, who perversely and
+sullenly refused obedience to his eldest brother, idling and playing
+with stones when he should be at work on the farm, and wandering no one
+knew whither when reproved, she was surprised to hear him say--
+
+'Um, ah, yes, I wanted to have a word with that boy of yours. But which
+am I to admonish, the eldest, who should set an example of brotherly
+love and consideration, or the youngest, who resents what he regards as
+petty persecution and overbearing assumption?'
+
+''Deed, sir, Rhys has only set a good example to the rest. He do work
+hard upon the farm all day, and teach them to read at night; and he do
+have a right to expect them to look up to him, and do what he tells
+them; for you see, sir, he do be grown quite a young man, and a good
+farmer too, look you.'
+
+'Um, ah, yes, yes. I see. I understand all about it, Mrs. Edwards,' was
+the vicar's running comment; 'I'll admonish the offender,' the twinkle
+in his genial blue eyes, as he turned to accost another parishioner,
+puzzling her greatly.
+
+However, as there was peace between the brothers for a considerable
+time, the widow congratulated herself on bespeaking the good vicar's
+interference.
+
+She was not aware, for Rhys did not think proper to say, that, after
+asking him confidentially if the gossip he had heard about himself and
+William was true, and what were the rights of the case, the vicar, out
+of his own mouth, had convicted him of a want of brotherly kindness and
+forbearance, and had 'admonished' him to remember what a lazy lad _he_
+had been prior to his father's death, and had asked how he would have
+liked an elder brother to come hectoring over him in those days? In
+short, he read Rhys an informal homily on arrogant assumption, and the
+need to exercise a degree of lenity towards a brother so much younger,
+who was in all probability no worse than he had been himself. It was
+something like a pinprick to an inflated balloon.
+
+Rhys did not hold his head quite so high as usual when he joined Cate
+and her father at the churchyard stile; and was so quiet during the walk
+homeward that Cate tossed her hat-crowned red head about in offended
+pettishness, and Owen looked at him askance, wondering what the good
+vicar had said to take all the brightness out of him.
+
+William was no less reticent. But, child though he was, he lived in a
+dream-world of his own, and had ceased to reveal his inner self on the
+domestic hearth, scared by the loud laughter and mockery that greeted
+his curious inquiries and precocious remarks.
+
+In his silence, therefore, there was nothing to surprise his mother, who
+had fallen in with the general opinion that he was sullen. She had seen
+the vicar lead him aside, and took the reprimand for granted.
+
+The opening words of his conversation with the nine years boy did not
+seem much like a reprimand.
+
+'So, William, I hear you are going to be a great builder? And Mr. Morris
+tells me you want to know all about the Tower of Babel and Solomon's
+Temple, the Druidical temples, and St. Helen's Church here, with bridges
+and I do not know what beside. Now which of all these are we to talk
+about first?'
+
+He had unlocked the boy's heart as with a magic key. Here was some one
+else who did not laugh at him. Their conversation lasted little over a
+quarter of an hour, and William was frequently the catechist, but it
+broke off like a serial story, 'to be continued.' And though it had been
+chiefly about building and builders, the vicar had not let the boy go
+away without a few words of gentle advice on his duty to himself and
+others--a lesson referred back to the two tablets of stone delivered to
+Moses amid the fiery terrors of Sinai.
+
+After that there was generally a Sunday morning chat in the churchyard,
+and on one occasion the vicar took the boy home with him to dinner, a
+distinction that puzzled Mrs. Edwards exceedingly, and made Rhys no less
+jealous.
+
+The vicar, a small man surmounted by a big clerical wig, had simply
+shown the boy a few architectural pictures in illustrated books, with a
+brief description of his own, the letterpress being English, and the
+boy's education stopping short at Welsh.
+
+There was a water-colour drawing upon the parlour wall of a ruined
+castle with a tower that had been rent from battlement to base, and
+appeared in the act of falling. It was too remarkable to escape
+William's observation. He eyed it intently for some minutes. At length
+he asked, 'What place is that, sir?'
+
+'That? Oh, that is Caerphilly Castle, the oldest fortress in Cambria. Do
+you not know it?'
+
+'No, but I mean to go there when the tailor comes to make me some proper
+clothes. The packman let me have the cloth for the stockings I have
+knitted, look you.'
+
+'Um, ah. So you are in a hurry to discard the ancient Cymric kilt are
+you?'
+
+'They make one look so like a girl,' was William's shamefaced answer.
+
+'Yet there are grown men both in Wales and in Scotland who still cling
+to the kilt, and are proud of it. You will be for casting off the old
+Saxon smock-frock next.'
+
+''Deed no, sir. Men wear smock-frocks, women don't. Rhys wears one and
+Evan too.'
+
+But, ancient or modern, no sooner had William a chance of an exchange
+for a short-tailed coat and a pair of knee-breeches than he felt he had
+made a step towards manhood, much as Davy had done before him--Davy, who
+went plodding along from day to day and from week to week, with scarcely
+a thought that did not centre in the farm, and who never troubled
+himself about 'whys' or 'wherefores.'
+
+'William is not at church to-day. How is that?' remarked the vicar to
+Mrs. Edwards on the Whitsunday, as he took his customary stroll among
+his parishioners in all the importance of his wig and three-cornered
+hat, noting each newly flower-decked grave as he went, and perhaps
+making a kindly remark in passing.
+
+''Deed, sir, I thought he would be here. He was dressed before any of
+us. Ales said he was proud as a peony of his new clothes, and had gone
+off first to show himself. He do be a strange boy.'
+
+'Did Rhys say anything to him about them?'
+
+'Yes, sure, he told him that now he was being dressed like a man he
+hoped he would cease to be playing with stones like a baby.'
+
+'Um, ah, yes, yes. I thought as much. You need not be alarmed if William
+is not home until late. I can partly guess where he has gone. He is not
+doing any harm, my good friend. He is in much less danger than Rhys, I
+can assure you.'
+
+Mrs. Edwards looked up in the vicar's expressive face, and following the
+glance of his pleasantly twinkling eye, her own rested on her eldest
+son, carefully handing Cate Griffith over the tall stile.
+
+She knew nothing of electricity, but certainly something like an
+electric shock passed through her, with its instantaneous enlightenment.
+A moment she stood dazed, then turned to address the vicar, but he was
+gone, and talking with a grey-haired old couple of a son who had been
+lost at sea, who had no grave to be dressed with flowers that
+Whitsuntide.
+
+William was forgotten in the newer care. There was no mistaking the
+attitude, the tender expression in the face of Rhys, or the coquettish
+aspect of the ruddy maiden as she placed her plump brown hand in his.
+
+'Sure,' said the widow to herself, 'Cate could get over a stile without
+help. I've seen her climb a tree or get over a wall before now. _That's_
+why Mrs. Griffith's been so ready to let Cate come to the farm to help
+at harvest-time, or whenever we were pushed. I see it all now, and the
+fear lest she should go home by herself after dark, as if the road did
+not be straight enough. And him a boy, not twenty yet. What do the woman
+be thinking of? Do she be thinking I would let Cate come on the farm as
+Rhys' wife, when Ales and Evan get married? Oh, Rhys, Rhys, and me a
+widow with three younger ones to rear, look you!'
+
+Jonet and Davy, standing close beside her, during her brief colloquy
+with the vicar, had no clue to the significance of his hint or his
+glance; but they could read the trouble on their mother's puckering
+brow, without suspicion of its cause.
+
+'What be the matter, mother?' asked Jonet anxiously, sidling up to her
+and slipping a small palm into the larger one. 'Do you be uneasy about
+Willem?'
+
+''Deed, Willem's all right. The vicar said so. You need not fret over
+him,' said Davy placidly. 'He will be gone to show Robert Jones his new
+clothes.'
+
+'Yes, yes, sure, that will be it,' assented the widow, smoothing her
+ruffled countenance with an effort, unwilling to share her discovery
+with either Davy or Jonet, although the former was by this time quite as
+old as Rhys had been when he felt himself entitled to assume a general
+protectorate of the family.
+
+Taking Jonet by the hand, she made her way across the churchyard more
+hastily than usual, barely nodding in recognition of an acquaintance who
+advanced a step or so in expectation of a chat. Her desire was to keep
+Rhys and Cate in sight, and so confirm or dispel her newly-aroused
+suspicions.
+
+But there were others before her at the stile, a father and mother, with
+three or four young children, to be helped up the steps on one side and
+down the other, and by the time her turn came, Rhys and the Griffiths
+were well in advance, and lost to sight by a bend in the road.
+
+Davy was always inclined to saunter along, and Jonet, however brisk at
+starting, began to drag heavily after the first mile on the return,
+encumbered by her Sunday shoes.
+
+For all that neither William nor Rhys were at home when they got there,
+and the rare Sunday's dinner of boiled meat and potatoes was on the
+table, with buttermilk to wash it down, before the latter came hurrying
+in, his cheeks aglow.
+
+The uneasy look on Mrs. Edwards' face had not been set aside with her
+hat and cloak--worn in all seasons on account of uncertain skies--nor
+had she found it as easy to conceal her displeasure with a smile, as it
+was to cover her best linsey-woolsey skirt with a fair linen apron.
+
+'Has not Willem come in?' asked Rhys, glancing round the kitchen.
+
+'No!' said his mother curtly, 'and _you_ have not been hurrying
+yourself.'
+
+'Owen Griffith kept me talking about the success of his new crop of
+potatoes. He says that his brothers, and Roberts, and Lloyd are all for
+trying them next year.'
+
+'Potatoes, indeed!' his mother jerked out, and he looked up at her. But
+he set her evident ill-humour down to the absence of William, as did
+both Evan and Ales.
+
+And where was William rambling that bright Whitsunday morning, when he
+should have been helping his mother to dress his father's grave with
+flowers?
+
+Had he gone, as suggested, to parade his manly suit before his friend
+Robert Jones?
+
+Not he; that would hardly have accounted for his absence from church,
+since the turf-cutter's cottage was on the direct road-side.
+
+No. When the vicar was giving out his text, William Edwards was studying
+a 'sermon in stones,' his text being Caerphilly Castle, and he standing
+in blank awe and amazement beneath the barbican towers of the only
+drawbridge time has spared out of the original thirteen, much as he had
+stood in infancy overpowered by the comparative vastness of Eglwysilan's
+church when he was first brought face to face with it.
+
+And now it was but a dumpy boy of nine who stood transfixed by that
+approach to a stronghold, 'of which the very ruins are stupendous,' a
+boy unread in history, who knew nothing of the Romans, or of Beli Gwar,
+or of Robert Fitzhamon, or of any of the conjectural first-founders, or
+of Edward the First who added so largely to its strength and size. He
+could see that it stood encircled by water in a wide plain surrounded by
+dark and barren mountains, but had any one informed him that it occupied
+an area equal to Windsor Castle he would have been no wiser, never
+having seen a castle before, or heard of any Windsor except the lord of
+the soil around his home.
+
+With mountains he was familiar. Their grandeur did not oppress him. They
+were the work of the infinite God who made the whole world, who set the
+sun and the moon and stars high in the heavens to give us light. The
+creation of the universe by the Almighty hand was no new idea in the
+boy's mind. But that men, only _men_, should have put that vast pile
+together, its towers, its massive walls that had outlasted hundreds of
+years, was suggestive of possibilities and capabilities that took his
+breath away.
+
+He stood there long, not so much because he was tired with his
+five-miles' rough walk that hot morning, but to overcome his first
+sensations of awe. Then he passed between the two great towers, and
+traversed courts and alleys, citadel, hall, chapel, whatever the
+pillared areas, the vast walls and arched windows, may suggest to
+antiquaries. To the boy they suggested only a marvellous enigma it was
+his fixed determination to solve _some_ day.
+
+In his explorations he had to scramble over the fragmentary ruins of a
+second drawbridge between flanking towers, over which the friendly ivy
+had thrown an evergreen mantle. Here he stood gazing astonished at the
+mass of solid masonry which had walled the castle in, and at a great
+arched gateway under which he passed. He groped his way down to an
+underground chamber where had been a smelting furnace and a mint; and
+from that wonder of wonders, a staircase to the turret-top.
+
+But nothing held him so spellbound as the leaning tower, which, with
+chambers and passages complete, and outer walls full ten feet thick,
+overhung its base nearly four yards, a threatening mass that so had hung
+in mid air since the convulsion that had rent the tower in twain
+centuries before, yet held aloft as surely as the tower of Bologna or of
+Pisa.
+
+Nothing knew William of these, or of battles or sieges, or of the force
+of water let in on molten metal; but he could wonder how the stones held
+together, and he could argue with himself that what had been done might
+be done.
+
+Aladdin's enchanted garden of precious stones was nothing to what
+Caerphilly Castle was to the boy William Edwards.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+MAN PROPOSES.
+
+
+Although, being warned by previous experience, William had stuffed his
+new pockets with bread before leaving home in the morning, he found that
+was a sorry substitute for a hearty dinner, and when he limped home in
+the waning light of the long summer evening, supper at the farm was over
+and cleared away. It was a doleful prospect, for there was an aching
+void in his interior that all the wonders of Caerphilly Castle had not
+served to fill.
+
+He had left home jauntily enough in the morning, but give any lad of his
+years a ten-miles' walk on a hot summer day, on a rough road up hill and
+down dale, and add a couple more miles of scrambling over ruins, and I
+venture to say all the jauntiness would be taken out of him. He would
+look as dusty and limp and jaded as did William Edwards, and his secret
+enthusiasm would not prevent a wistful look at the table, bare of all
+save crumbs and milky rings where mugs had been.
+
+Rhys had stood propping up the door-post as he ascended the stony lane,
+and entered the enclosure in front of the house by the stile.
+
+'What do you mean by coming home at this time of night?' he cried
+sharply, catching his brother by the shoulder. 'Where have you been all
+day, you vagabond, wearing the shoes off your feet?'
+
+'I've not been after Cate Griffith,' was flung back in retort, and, as
+if a stone had struck him, the grip of Rhys on the shoulder relaxed, to
+let the 'vagabond' pass in.
+
+The empty table was not more expressive to him than was the averted
+countenance of his mother, who sat on the high-backed settle, her brow
+clouded, her unseeing eyes steadfastly gazing at the low hearth where
+the embers were smouldering into white ashes. Probably she did not see
+him as he dropped wearily down on a three-legged stool opposite.
+
+Davy sat at the table, half asleep, his face hidden on his folded arms.
+Evan was busy in the farmyard. He could hear his wooden shoes clattering
+over the stones. Ales was going in and out.
+
+Jonet, who had been watching for William's return, with her light-brown
+head and half her body stretched out of the bedroom window, came
+noiselessly across the wide kitchen. Her arm stole lovingly around his
+neck. 'You are tired, Willem; do you be hungry?'
+
+He gave her hand a squeeze and nodded. Her bare feet were off towards
+the dairy.
+
+There was a whispering in the passage. In a few minutes Ales brought in
+a mug of buttermilk and a great hunch of brown bread.
+
+'Here,' she cried, 'eat that; though you don't deserve it, going off no
+one knows where.'
+
+He thanked her for the unhoped-for supper, but he did not tell her where
+he had been, though he knew she had an old mother living somewhere in
+Caerphilly. Whereabouts he did not know, and, having no news of the poor
+rheumatic old woman, he munched his bread in silence.
+
+His mother never raised her head. If she saw him she made no sign. Rhys
+had been away all the afternoon. That lay heavier on her heart than any
+wanderings of William, though _he_ thought otherwise. There was no
+red-headed Cate lying in wait for her youngest born--no one seeking to
+steal his heart away from her. She was hesitating whether to take Rhys
+to task, or, as Ales suggested, to 'wait and let the waters pass.'
+
+But Jane Edwards had not a passive nature. She was more inclined to be
+up and doing than to wait. 'Yes,' she communed with herself, 'the waters
+may pass, but they may carry my Rhys with them. I want no Cate ordering
+about here; the artful jade!'
+
+As if the very thought had been a stimulus, she rose abruptly, and,
+passing out into the moonlight, joined her son, who was bending over the
+low stone wall, looking intently down the rugged slope.
+
+'What are you looking for, Rhys?'
+
+He gave a sudden start as she went on, 'Do you be watching the moonlight
+on the river, and thinking how different was the night that took your
+father from us?'
+
+She put her arm within his as she spoke, and laid her head, in its white
+linen cap, against his shoulder.
+
+'Ah, Rhys, that was a terrible time, a terrible time. But, thanks be to
+God, we won through it. And it made a man of you, my dear boy. Well do I
+remember how you came to comfort me, and promised always to be a good
+son, and do your duty by me, and by the children, and by the farm, in
+the sight of God. And you have always done it, Rhys, _fach_, always--
+And--and--it would be breaking my heart, Rhys, if--if--you should be
+caring more for some one else than for your promise--or for your
+mother--and--and for Jonet--and the others.' And there she paused, but
+he made no response, and she continued.
+
+The latter half of the sentence was sobbed rather than spoken, and Rhys,
+who had a tender heart, notwithstanding his contempt for William's
+day-dreams, was deeply moved by her emotion.
+
+For the moment, Cate and his own day-dreams were lost sight of.
+
+'Mother, dear,' said he, not perhaps so truthfully as might have been,
+though he felt at the time that all he said _was_ true. 'Mother, no one
+can ever come between us, or make me forget my old promise. What makes
+you be thinking so to-night? Have I not done my duty so far?' And now
+his strong arm went round her with more than the old protectorate.
+
+'Yes, yes, indeed, Rhys, you have always been a good son; but--but--you
+have been something different of late--and--I thought, perhaps, Elain
+Lloyd--or--or--Cate Griffith might have been looking out for you, and
+for stealing your heart away from us all, look you.'
+
+He began a fresh disclaimer at the mention of Elain Lloyd, but stopped
+short, and she could feel him wince and hold his breath when the name of
+Cate Griffith followed.
+
+The denial died upon his lips. There was a pause. Early or precipitate
+marriages are not common in Wales. The consent of parents must first be
+obtained, and he had not yet spoken of marriage to Cate, but he knew the
+anticipation lurked in both their hearts, and there was a momentary
+struggle between two loves--two duties.
+
+His mother's emotion had moved him as no angry words could have done,
+and so moved him that at the moment he would have given up Cate or any
+one to console her.
+
+'Yes, yes, mother, _fach_; Cate is a nice girl--and we are very good
+friends, the best of friends; but you need not be afraid; I am not going
+to bring her, or any one else whatever, to disturb you, indeed no.'
+
+If there was a mental reservation, 'at least not just yet,' the words
+were unspoken.
+
+And so, with a kiss of peace between mother and son, the disturbing
+spirit was laid at rest.
+
+At rest--that was, on the surface--and for the time being.
+
+True to his promise, and with an unappreciated effort, Rhys confined his
+attentions to Cate to the walk home from church, and was apparently less
+desirous to loiter with her in the rear of her parents. With commendable
+self-repression--seeing that his own inclination ran counter to his
+filial bond--he found occupation on the farm when otherwise he might
+have had an errand that should take him across the shallow brook and
+past the weaver's cottage. Or, if he had really business that way, he
+showed less disposition to linger at open door or window.
+
+Cate resented this with pettishness, and the transference of her winning
+smiles to Robert, the young brother of Elain Lloyd, until the coolness
+became coldness mingled with pique, and the two passed each other at
+church or on the road with affected indifference.
+
+Had there been an absolute quarrel, it might have spent itself in
+reproaches, or been made up when the storm-cloud had passed, but this
+unexplained reserve went on for months and months, and the breach
+continued open.
+
+Mrs. Edwards ought to have been satisfied with the result of her
+interference, and for a time she was. But somehow the temper of Rhys had
+not improved. His assertion of mastership became more pronounced. He and
+William came into frequent collision as the weeks and months rounded
+into years, and the harmony of the household was disturbed. Jonet
+appealed to her mother against his dictatorship, and even Davy roused
+from his passivity and objected 'to be ordered about like a hired
+labourer.'
+
+There was no denying that Brookside Farm had materially improved under
+the new system of cropping and manuring Evan Evans had introduced, or
+that half the farmers in the parish had begun to plant potatoes since
+the root had proved so profitable there. Then there was land under
+cultivation that had formerly lain waste, and Mrs. Edwards was no longer
+in dread of the rent-day, or of Mr. Pryse, let him scowl as he would.
+
+She was always ready to give Evan the credit, and to pay him well for
+his services. But her eldest son, having profited by the man's
+instructions through a succession of years, began to think himself wiser
+than his teacher, and either argued against or disapproved most of his
+suggestions, whether for the cultivation of the land or the treatment of
+the stock. Rhys had been a mere boy when Evan came upon the farm, and
+the others quite children. It was scarcely likely that he who had seen
+them grow up was to submit to the young fellow's rule as if their ages
+were reversed.
+
+Night after night, when Evan and Ales sat up together courting after the
+rest were in bed, as was the old custom, he would talk over some fresh
+slight or indignity received from Rhys, and declare his intention to
+quit the farm and get married at the next yearly hirings.
+
+''Deed, and it is not that I would like to be doing Mrs. Edwards an ill
+turn, in taking you away before Jonet is old enough to supply your
+place, in some sort, Ales, _fach_, or in going and leaving Rhys to do as
+he likes; but I am too old to be ordered about and taught my business by
+him, whatever. His good mother did never be doing it--and it's time we
+was be thinking of that little cottage at Castella, with the nice bit of
+land that would serve for a pig and a cow. We would soon be wanting
+another field and another cow, Ales, and we could have your mother over
+from Caerphilly to live with us--yes, indeed.'
+
+'Yes, indeed, Evan; but I do be thinking Jonet do not be strong or tall
+enough to lift the dasher of the big churn, and it would come hard on
+Mrs. Edwards if she did be having to make the butter come. We do better
+be waiting a bit longer, or there's Rhys would be bringing Cate Griffith
+here to plague his mother's heart; yes, sure.'
+
+And so from time to time it was proposed, and from time to time put off,
+Evan growing more and more dissatisfied at being thrust into the
+background, until, at length, when nearly three more years had spun
+their uneven thread, Ales consented to quit Brookside for the cottage at
+Castella, and Mrs. Edwards, weary of adjusting differences, endeavoured
+to persuade herself that now her sons and her daughter were growing up
+around her, they should be able to manage well without them, and,
+indeed, save something in food and wages.
+
+At the first announcement of their decision, Rhys brisked up
+wonderfully. He shook Evan by the hand as if there had never been a
+difference between them, and congratulated him on his sensible choice,
+and on his prospect of happiness, with quite friendly interest.
+
+William was the only one at all depressed by the proposed changes. Evan
+and Ales had frequently stood between him and overbearing Rhys; he had
+become attached to them, and felt he should lose two good friends when
+they married and went away. So there was a note of regret in his
+congratulations.
+
+The thatched cottage at Castella was taken, duly whitewashed within and
+without, and the earthen floor relaid and left to harden. But Evan had
+promised Ales that she should have glass windows, and for these, and for
+his farming implements, he would have to make a journey to Cardiff. He
+had engaged a local carpenter to make a bed, a wooden settle, a table,
+and platter shelves. Ales herself had a pretty fair collection of useful
+articles in the shape of pots, bowls, and mugs, stowed away in the barn,
+having added to her store whenever the packman came his rounds. And she
+had, besides, a goodly pair of thick blankets, of which she was not a
+little proud, having spun the wool in spare hours when her other work
+was done, to say nothing of flannel and linsey-woolsey for wedding
+garments--under-linen was then and there of no account. Mrs. Edwards had
+promised Ales a new felt hat and a shawl for the auspicious occasion,
+and they bade fair to make a good start according to the ideas then
+prevailing. It would be thought little of nowadays, when art has found
+its way into the humblest abodes. But what had never been known or heard
+of could not be missed, and the absolute wants of nature are really very
+few.
+
+As their yearly servitude happened to terminate alike at Martinmas, Mrs.
+Edwards kindly proposed their continuance on the farm whilst Ales
+completed some needful preparations, and Evan made his important journey
+to Cardiff. The wedding was to take place soon after his return, for the
+Rev. John Smith had been notified, and read out the banns, for the first
+time, on the last Sunday in September, the faithful pair looking down
+and blushing crimson as the eyes of the whole congregation turned
+towards them.
+
+They left the church together, feeling half-married, nothing doubting
+that the ceremony would be completed three weeks later.
+
+But they had calculated without Mr. Pryse.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+WHERE IS EVAN?
+
+
+The difference between a full-face portrait and a profile is not so
+great as the different aspect the same individual may present to
+different people. To his noble employer, Mr. Pryse was the very
+beau-ideal of a shrewd business man,--clear-headed, active, and
+indefatigable in his interests and that of the large estate under his
+control,--a man on whom he could rely, for dealing conscientiously alike
+with himself and his tenants, in his absence.
+
+Those tenants saw only a hard, grasping, unscrupulous agent, who
+extorted high rents, made no allowance for bad seasons or failing crops,
+and who stifled complaints with an extra turn of the screw. They knew
+that all repairs and improvements, made at their own cost, would be
+wrested to the advantage of the noble landowner in the long-run, and
+were disheartened. There was an unwhisperable suspicion afloat that
+these said repairs went down as deductions from rents in the accounts
+submitted to his lord; but who ever had a chance of overhauling those
+accounts, or questioning crafty Mr. Pryse's unimpeachable integrity?
+
+And about the time when William Edwards first found his way to
+Caerphilly Castle, which was in the year after George II. ascended the
+throne, the first faint breaths of a graver suspicion were wafted
+northwards, from Cardiff, in unaccountable and mysterious undertones.
+
+Cardiff, now a flourishing and busy seaport, was then, in spite of its
+great castle, but a small, mean, and unimportant town, hardly to be
+called a port, its ancient prestige having fallen away like its gates
+and walls.
+
+But about this period Mr. Pryse ceased to collect his lord's rents
+regularly at Caerphilly, and required that they should be brought to his
+office in Cardiff. This was a woful grievance to the bulk of the
+tenants, especially to elderly or infirm persons, or others remote from
+the county town. Had his lordship been at the Castle, no doubt his irate
+tenants would have sought his presence in a body, and made common cause
+against the common oppressor; but no such opportunity occurred.
+
+Neighbours who dreaded the toil of a nineteen or twenty miles' journey
+along bad roads in bad weather, with Mr. Pryse at the end, and as
+wearisome a return, would meet and agree to trust the bravest of the
+party with the separate rents of two or three, having no fear of robbery
+by the way, whilst so many other travellers would be fallen in with, all
+bent on the same errand.
+
+Some of these adventurous wights, who had never been so far as Cardiff
+in their lives before, brought back the news, either gathered on the
+spot or on the road, that a strange craft had begun to frequent the
+river, and to anchor off the old sea-wall. It was said that the vessel
+had been a privateer during the wars of the previous reign, and that
+although she came thither ostensibly for coal from his lordship's
+collieries, and Mr. Pryse was in close communication with the captain,
+there was something rather mysterious about her cargo.
+
+[Illustration: THERE WAS SOMETHING RATHER MYSTERIOUS ABOUT HER CARGO.
+--_See page 164._]
+
+It was darkly hinted that the barrels which came pannier-wise on long
+strings of horses from the Caerphilly colliery laden with coal, and were
+hauled on board to be emptied, were not returned empty, but, when again
+slung across the backs of the patient beasts waiting on the old quay,
+seemed no lighter than before; and knowing ones surmised, from the care
+with which they were handled, that smaller kegs were slipped inside the
+open coal barrels. At all events, it was whispered that the teamsters
+lingered long at roadside inns, and that some of them struck into
+by-ways instead of making direct for the colliery with their empties.
+And it was certain that foreign spirits could be procured by the
+initiated where only _cwrw da_ or cider had been hitherto obtainable.
+
+This had been going on for three years when Evan, the
+bridegroom-expectant, prepared for his journey to Cardiff, whence he
+proposed to bring Ales her golden wedding-ring, as well as a number of
+small articles--not included in the 'furnishing list' of cumbrous
+goods--to be ferried across the river for after-conveyance to his new
+cottage.
+
+To Mrs. Edwards the enforced journey to Cardiff for the payment of rent
+had been a trouble and a grievance. She had not cared to send hot-headed
+Rhys by himself into a town which she pictured as full of temptations
+for young men, neither had she cared to go thither alone. Twice had she
+taken her son with her; once she had made the toilsome journey in
+company with Owen Griffith; at other times she had entrusted him with
+the rent-money. But now that Evan was bent thither on business of his
+own, her natural thrift suggested the employment of him as her deputy,
+so as to save the toil of the journey, and innkeeper's charges for
+herself and her beast.
+
+Owen Griffith, too, was glad of a trustworthy substitute; so that when
+Evan kissed Ales, and shook hands with the rest as he bestrode good old
+Breint at the farmhouse gate, he carried a goodly sum under his new
+frieze riding-coat, in one pocket or other, nearly all the savings of
+Ales, in addition to his own, and the two rents.
+
+His departure was quite an event. Owen Griffith and Cate had walked up
+the hill to hand him the money and see him off, though the hour was
+early, and a drizzling rain had begun to fall. But rain was no new thing
+among the mountains, and nobody cared for that, though, doubtless, they
+would have preferred fair weather as more auspicious.
+
+However, Ales flung an old shoe after him, and called out--
+
+'For luck, Evan!'
+
+He looked back over his shoulder to nod his thanks in reply; whereupon
+she threw her apron over her head and ran into the house ready to cry
+because he had 'spoiled his luck' by looking back.
+
+Mrs. Edwards, too, would have been better pleased had he gone on with
+face set forward, but she cried, 'God keep him, and bring him safe
+back!' as if to counteract the untoward prognostic. Yet a cloud was
+gathering on her own brow, for though Owen Griffith walked beside the
+horse down the stony incline, Cate remained leaning against the stone
+gate-post talking earnestly with Rhys, the flush on her countenance
+deepening as he bent his head and lowered his voice to meet her ear
+only.
+
+'The bold-faced huzzie!' the mother ejaculated to herself, as she turned
+to go indoors. 'Can she not let Ales get out of the house before she be
+coming a-seeking Rhys to worm herself in! Sure, and she do be in a
+mighty hurry to make up the old quarrel, and secure Rhys, and Owen do be
+as bad as his girl. But Ales is not gone yet!' she jerked out
+half-aloud, then checked herself, wondering what could have put those
+ill-timed words into her head.
+
+She was mistaken. Cate Griffith was not quite so bold as she imagined.
+The quarrel had been made up some weeks, and, what was more, made up by
+Rhys, with a plain-spoken offer to make her his wife when Ales was
+married and gone away.
+
+What he had been saying, as Evan rode away down hill, was singularly
+enough, 'We shall not have long to wait now, Cate, darling. Ales will
+soon be gone, and mother will be missing her so much she will be glad to
+see me bring so clever and smart a wife home to fill the vacant place.
+Jonet could not do it. No, really! We shall not have long to be waiting,
+Cate, _fach_.'
+
+
+     'The best laid schemes o' mice an' men
+                        Gang aft agley.'
+
+
+Centuries before Burns crystallised the sentiment into verse its
+profound truth had been established. Who, besides Noah and his family,
+calculated on the Deluge?
+
+Were the tears Ales shed, when her long-loved Evan turned his head,
+premonitory of another deluge?
+
+She was a strong, healthy young woman, not a puling sentimentalist
+afflicted with 'nerves.' She might well cover her face, ashamed of her
+starting tears, when he would be back with her in four days--or five, at
+the furthest!
+
+Yet she was unaccountably restless those days. The outdoor work of the
+farm went on pretty much as usual, though the weather was unsettled.
+Rhys and Davy were thrashing and winnowing in the barn, and William,
+endeavouring to do the work of two, fed and foddered the cattle, and
+took the place of Ales at the churn, whilst she washed and ironed, and
+put little finishing touches to her simple wedding finery, sighing,
+every now and again, for the Evan she missed every hour of the day. When
+candles were lit, and at meal-times, the blank caused by the absence of
+his smiling face and good-humoured observation, was felt by all, from
+Mrs. Edwards down to William.
+
+And somehow, as the days went by, Jane Edwards began to share the
+fidgetiness of Ales, and, when the fourth passed, and the fifth wore
+slowly away, could not help frequent ejaculations, such as, 'It's time
+Evan was here!' 'What do be keeping Evan so long?' 'Sure to goodness
+nothing's gone wrong!' Ales growing still and white, with a strange fear
+that began to creep about her heart.
+
+Evan had gone away on the Monday morning. Ere nightfall on Friday,
+William slipped out and hurried to the ford, as if to meet him, passing
+Owen Griffith at the foot of the hill, on his way to the farm to express
+his own surprise at the messenger's delay.
+
+William waited and waited, but there was no sign of Evan. He got back to
+hear Griffith questioning Ales as to the various business her sweetheart
+had on hand, the conclusion being that he had not been able to make all
+his purchases, or get them conveyed to Castella, as readily as he had
+calculated, and that he must be allowed another day.
+
+But Saturday came and went without a sign of the traveller, and Ales
+seemed to feel the alarm of all in her own aching heart.
+
+Neither Evan nor Ales was at church on the Sunday to hear the banns read
+the second time.
+
+But people were there to testify that Evan Evans had reached Cardiff in
+safety, and had been seen to enter the office of Mr. Pryse.
+
+On that, Owen Griffith and Mrs. Edwards breathed more freely. Their
+fears that he had been waylaid and robbed were set at rest. It was clear
+his own affairs had alone detained him.
+
+William, on his own inspiriting, had betaken himself to Caerphilly, and
+brought Ales back the comforting news that her Evan had carried the
+basket of butter and cheese to her old mother, and arranged for her
+removal to Castella with them.
+
+So far all was right. But when another week went by, and no Evan came to
+claim her, or to bring the rent receipts, the heart of Ales sank lower
+and lower; every whisper in the house was suggestive of doubt, and
+pierced her bosom like a stab.
+
+Owen Griffith was there nightly making fresh inquiries, often bringing
+Cate along with him, when Ales' heart was wrung with undertoned
+suspicions of her true love's fidelity--not to say his honesty.
+
+At the three weeks' end, when the poor tortured girl had resolved on
+walking all the way to Cardiff, to set doubt at rest, the climax came.
+
+It came like a thunderbolt, in the person of Mr. Pryse, to make an
+authoritative demand for the half-year's rent, then overdue.
+
+It was in vain Mrs. Edwards declared it had been paid; that she had sent
+the money by Evan Evans.
+
+'In that case you will have the receipt. Produce it,' said he, with a
+sneer.
+
+'I cannot,' replied she, in much perplexity. 'Evan has not yet returned.
+But he was seen to enter your office; yes, indeed!'
+
+'Oh yes, he did come to my office to pay your neighbour Owen Griffith's
+rent, and to beg a fortnight's grace for you. I have been good enough to
+give you three weeks, and now I _must_ have the rent--one way or other.'
+
+The evil smile of triumph on his wicked old face, as he said this, was
+lost on Mrs. Edwards in her consternation.
+
+'Beg _what_? I did want no fortnight's grace. I did send the golden
+guineas!'
+
+Mr. Pryse's thin lip curled. 'Then your man kept them. And it is rather
+strange he should pay Griffith's rent if he meant to make off with
+yours. There must be lying and dishonesty somewhere.'
+
+'Yes, indeed,' broke from Ales, in a passion of indignant wrath. 'But
+not from my mistress or Evan Evans; they do both be God-fearing and
+true.'
+
+An ominous scowl drew down the brows under the English three-cornered
+hat.
+
+'Silence, you impudent jade, or I'll have you cast into jail for your
+vile insinuations. Wait until your _honest_ Evan comes back before you
+venture to asperse his lordship's deputy.' And he raised his
+riding-whip as if to strike her.
+
+Rhys had come upon the scene in the midst of this altercation, brought
+thither by a word from Lewis, who had seen the agent ride up the hill,
+with a sinister smile upon his face, and a ruffianly fellow in his rear.
+
+At once the hot-blooded young farmer, in a smock-frock showing many an
+earthy stain, interposed between his mother's faithful domestic and the
+steward, unawed by the gold lace or ruffles visible under the open
+riding-coat.
+
+'Nay, nay, we don't take whips to women in Eglwysilan, Mr. Pryse. What
+is all this uproar about? And what do be your business here, sir?'
+
+His mother attempted an explanation. Ales had shrunk back overawed.
+
+'I have come for the unpaid rent, and the costs attending this
+application,' Mr. Pryse thrust in, heedless of Rhys' disclaimer that
+'nothing was owing'; 'and, as no cash appears to be forthcoming, I take
+possession of the farm in the name of his lordship, and leave this man
+in charge of the premises, and I warn you against removing stock or
+stone. Take the inventory, Morgan'--to the man who had edged himself
+into the kitchen, and now put on a truculent air.
+
+William had come rushing in from the potato-field, but he stopped short,
+as much paralysed as his elders.
+
+His mother was the first to break the spell.
+
+'Paid or unpaid,' she cried, with the dignity of truth and honesty,
+'that wretch shall take no inventory here, whatever. I do not be without
+the means to pay your demand, though I protest that it is unjust, and
+will have to be returned to me when Evan returns with the receipt, look
+you.'
+
+'Ah, _when he does_. But you may take my word for it, the bird has flown
+away with your golden feathers, and is far enough from Wales by this
+time.'
+
+And again the sinister smile lighted the evil face, much as if he had
+good reason for knowing that Evan was far away, and that his word might
+therefore _be_ taken.
+
+'I am glad to see you are so well provided,' he added, as the widow
+proceeded to count out upon the table the sum demanded, leaving still a
+nest-egg in the grey stocking-foot. 'Your farm must be flourishing, and
+I herewith give you notice, in the presence of my man, Morgan, that your
+rent will be advanced ten pounds per annum after this date.--I will send
+you a receipt.'
+
+[Illustration: 'YOUR RENT WILL BE ADVANCED TEN POUNDS PER ANNUM AFTER
+THIS DATE,' HE SAID.--_See page 174._]
+
+'No, sir,' put in Rhys promptly, 'you will give my mother one now. I see
+your follower there has an inkhorn and paper.'
+
+Mr. Pryse bit his under lip, but thought well to take the hint.
+
+'And now, sir,' said Rhys, when he had assured himself the receipt was
+correct, 'you do be threatening to raise the rent. You cannot do that
+until the lease expires.'
+
+'Show me your lease,' demanded the agent loftily.
+
+'We can do that when necessary, sir. His lordship will be having a copy
+you can consult,' replied Rhys quite as loftily.
+
+And, seeing that he had a full-grown man to deal with, not a woman he
+could intimidate, Mr. Pryse turned on his heel, and mounted his horse,
+muttering something surly as he went, his disappointed functionary
+following at his heels.
+
+Once again he bit his nails as his horse carried him down the stony
+track, for even the coin he bore away did not cover his baffled rage at
+defeat. Presently his thin lips spread into a smile of
+self-congratulation, and his eyelids nearly met as he communed with
+himself.
+
+'It was lucky I did not call on Griffith for _his_ rent first. I
+clinched the nail on Evan's dishonest flight in acknowledging _that_. A
+clever idea of mine his begging grace for Edwards' widow. Covers his
+call at my office. I suppose that forward jade is the woman he was going
+to marry. She will wait a long while for a husband if she waits for Evan
+Evans, look you. And as for that cock-crowing Rhys, I'll cut his comb
+before I've done with him. He shall not crow over me with impunity; no,
+indeed. I've bled the old woman pretty freely this time. She'll not get
+over it in a hurry. The farm will go to the dogs now that long-headed
+farming-man is gone. Lease, indeed! I defy any power in earth or heaven
+to keep them on their farm when I am ready to turn them out. Yes,
+indeed!'
+
+A strong defiance _that_, Mr. Pryse, crafty and potential though you may
+be!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+A STOP-GAP.
+
+
+As soon as Mr. Pryse was gone, Mrs. Edwards sank down on the oaken
+settle exhausted with the conflict of disturbing thoughts, and the
+harassing scene in which she had just borne a part. The old
+stocking-foot, which had been her only possible savings bank all the
+years of her thrifty widowhood, lay, with her limp hand, in her lap, in
+a corresponding state of collapse. Only three weeks before it had been
+plump and pleasant to contemplate, a testimony to industry, and a pledge
+of future prosperity. Now, within those three short weeks, the full
+half-year's rent had been a second time withdrawn, with exorbitant costs
+in addition, and the residue had ample space to chink.
+
+There was a troubled aspect of careworn bewilderment on her countenance
+as she sat there, gazing abstractedly on her diminished store,
+endeavouring to reconcile the irreconcilable. And all the while Rhys was
+pacing the kitchen floor, with noisy tramp, in his wood-soled shoes,
+chafing and fuming over the cruel insolence of Mr. Pryse, as well as
+over their loss, yet wondering vaguely if there could be any truth in
+his allegations.
+
+He did not altogether trust Mr. Pryse, but he had never had his mother's
+unbounded confidence in Evan, and, as Owen Griffith had suggested, so
+much money in his hands all at once might have proved too great a
+temptation, or he might have got drunk and lost it, and been ashamed to
+return. (But Evan did not drink.)
+
+Now and then a sharp, jerky expletive gave expression to his crude
+doubts and suspicions, but he could not wring from his mother any word
+to strengthen his suspicions.
+
+'I do not be knowing what to think, Rhys!'--''Deed, Rhys, Evan has
+served us well, and Mr. Pryse is a bad man, your father said it.'--'Yes,
+indeed, it is a serious loss, but Evan helped us to get the
+money.'--'Yes, yes, Rhys, I do be aware you have worked hard too; but
+Evan, he did teach us new ways--and--after all,' she concluded, rising
+slowly to replace the depleted stocking in the coffer, 'we may thank God
+we had the money saved, or our farm would have gone from us, and we
+should have lost everything. Think of poor Ales, and don't be letting
+her hear you.'
+
+Poor Ales! William had found her in the dairy, bent down over the tall
+churn, with her head on her bare brown arms, sobbing as if her heart
+would break, less for herself than the aspersion cast on her true and
+faithful Evan. She had shrunk away, not from Mr. Pryse's whip, but from
+an evil tongue and a threat that cut worse than a whip-lash.
+
+Prisons were horrible dens before John Howard spent his life in
+dragging their iniquities to light, and purifying their foulness. 'Jail'
+was a word to daunt the strongest, for everywhere tales were rife how
+unscrupulous power thrust innocent men within their pestilential walls
+to perish, for no crime greater than debt or unguarded words.
+
+William comforted in vain.
+
+'Jail, Willem! He said he would send me to _jail_, only for standing up
+for honest people. But he is a rogue, Willem--a bad, wicked rogue,
+Willem.' She sobbed and shuddered as she gasped out the words. 'Yes,
+'deed! it will be that cruel Mr. Pryse that do be robbing the widow of
+her money--and--and my poor Evan of his good name. Yes, sure, and me of
+my dear husband that would have been this day! Oh, Willem _fach_, my
+poor heart will be breaking.'
+
+'Hush, Ales dear! don't say so,' implored the sympathetic boy, laying
+his hand tenderly upon her shoulder. 'Unkind words are hard to bear, I
+know'--and he sighed--'but nobody here will think Evan took our money
+and yours, and ran away from _you_.' (He might have altered his opinion
+could he have heard through the stone wall what Rhys was saying.) 'Cheer
+up; it will all come right when Evan gets back; yes, sure.'
+
+Ales startled William with the quick, energetic way she flung up her
+head and spoke--
+
+'Come back? He will not come back unless I can seek out what that wicked
+wretch has done with him. Would he be so sure of it, or dare to come
+here to rob your mother--yes, to rob her--if he did not know what he had
+done to keep my Evan from me? He may have put _him_ in jail to rot
+there. Oh!' (and she wrung her hands, brown and hard with honest
+toil)--'oh! or he may have had him _murdered_. He is bad enough for
+that!'
+
+'Hush, hush, Ales! Mr. Pryse would hardly do that; though he _is_ a bad
+man, and looked, oh, so wickedly pleased when he knocked down the Tower
+of Babel I was building. I'm afraid, Ales dear, he would not stick at
+much,' William added, after a moment's cogitation.
+
+'Name o' goodness, boy! He would stick at nothing whatever!' she cried,
+rising to her feet, and taking her cloak from a peg in the storeroom
+outside the dairy. 'But I am off to Cardiff to find Evan, or search out
+the truth; and do you pray for me, Willem, that I may succeed, and that
+no harm may come to me before I do.'
+
+'Stay, stay, Ales,' exclaimed William, catching at her cloak in the
+doorway; 'you cannot go all that way on foot, and alone, or at this time
+o' day.'
+
+Her voice was strangely quiet and determined as she answered--
+
+'The sun has not set. I shall reach Caerphilly before night, and can
+stay and rest with mother until morning.'
+
+''Deed, now, you had best be staying where you are till morning, and you
+shall have a horse to ride on. And if there is no one else to go with
+you, I will go myself, sure.'
+
+After some persuasion, Ales consented to the first proposition,
+absolutely declining to accept his proffered escort, saying, 'Now Evan
+be gone you cannot be spared. And, now the money be gone, you must give
+up playing with stones, and work well to keep the farm from the sly old
+fox. Ah, sure, and the fox might be glad to catch the young goose near
+his hole. No, no, Willem, _you_ must not run into danger. There be no
+need to break your mother's heart as well as mine. If God speed my
+errand I shall not be alone. Better God's arm than man's army.'
+
+As her cloak went back to the peg, William slipped out through the
+farmyard, and was off down hill as fast as his legs would carry him.
+Davy and Jonet, returning from the potato-field where they had been
+industriously at work, undisturbed and unaware of the overwhelming
+trouble nearer home, called out to know where he was going; but if he
+heard he did not answer.
+
+Supper--the old frugal meal of stiff leek porridge and milk--was on the
+table cooling when he returned out of breath, and whispered to Ales, as
+she carried out the porridge-pot, that their mutual friend, Robert
+Jones, had business of his own in Cardiff, and if she would join him at
+seven in the morning, where the roads met, she could ride all the way on
+one of his team. He did not tell her all he had said to enlist his old
+friend in her service, or how heartily the turf-cutter had responded,
+or that the man's errand was chiefly on her account.
+
+Robert Jones knew more of 'old Pryse' than she did, and hated him as
+sincerely.
+
+There had been some previous talk between Ales and her old mistress
+about the young woman's continuation on the farm unless Evan returned to
+claim her.
+
+'I'd rather serve you for nothing than go away before Evan's good name
+was cleared, 'deed I would. And it will be cleared some day, I know it
+will, whatever some folk may think.'
+
+She had said this with a full heart, meaning all she proposed, but Mrs.
+Edwards was too just to accept service on such terms from a tried and
+faithful maid in her hour of deep affliction. Besides, she had a feeling
+that whilst Ales was there, well-trained and active, Rhys would have
+less excuse to bring Cate on to the hearth. Motives are always more or
+less complex.
+
+The objections of Mrs. Edwards to Cate Griffith certainly were so. She
+would have conceded that 'the girl was good-looking, quick of foot, and
+ready of hand,' but she would have added also, 'ready with her tongue,
+and not quite straightforward in her ways.' Then, if she must be deposed
+by her eldest son's wife, she would have been better pleased had he
+looked higher, and gone courting where there would be a little money to
+come home with the bride. Cate would have none to bring.
+
+With such feelings uppermost, she did not contemplate the temporary
+absence of Ales with too much favour, anxious as she was for some news
+of Evan and of her missing money.
+
+Mr. Pryse had disorganised the work in field and house for the one day
+utterly. All was now behind-hand. She was herself upset, and a woman far
+on the wrong side of fifty does not recover her balance too readily. The
+sudden departure of Ales at this inopportune juncture was another upset.
+
+But she would not confess her weakness to Rhys, lest he should make it
+an excuse for bringing Cate to her assistance.
+
+Yesterday--Tuesday--had been baking-day. In their trouble the oven had
+been allowed to grow cool, and the dislodged terrier, who had shown a
+set of angry teeth at Mr. Pryse, had gone back to his repose underneath
+it. The barley and oatmeal for the bread lay in the brown crock, as Ales
+had left it, with the bit of last week's dough in a bowl ready to leaven
+it. Mixing, kneading, and baking was not light work, yet it must be
+done. Thoughtful Davy had again driven away the dog from his hole in the
+ash-pit, and lit the oven fire in readiness.
+
+Then it was _Wednesday_, the churning and butter-making day. How was she
+to bake and churn the same morning? for both required attention, and
+when once the long-handled dasher was set in motion, up and down it must
+go until the butter came, however long that might be, or all would be
+spoiled.
+
+Jane Edwards, persistent as her children, was at her wits' end, but she
+could not call Jonet in from the field, for they were late in digging up
+the potatoes, and if the frost came before they were in the pits, the
+whole crop would be ruined.
+
+Then dinner had to be thought of. It was a relief to her, whilst
+kneading the mass of dough, to hear Davy scrubbing away with a ling
+besom at the dinner potatoes in the stone hollow under the spring. But
+she heard the quick voice of Rhys recalling him to his field-work, and
+the passive 'I be coming,' which marked his subjection to his elder
+brother.
+
+At noon, when her family came in to dine, expecting the Wednesday's meal
+of buttermilk and potatoes--still new enough to be something of a
+treat--though there was a pleasant odour of baking bread in the kitchen,
+and there were anticipations of a dough dumpling in the pot, there were
+unmistakable grumblings and sour looks because there was only fresh milk
+to go with the esculent root. (The difference is only to be estimated by
+a trial on a farm where the buttermilk is fresh.)
+
+Jane Edwards was overtired, and lost her temper. 'You could not expect
+me to be baking and churning at the same time,' she jerked out angrily,
+feeling already warm with her morning's work.
+
+Here was the opportunity Rhys had looked for.
+
+'You had better have had Cate here this morning to churn. Then you would
+not have been so hurried, and our dinner would not have been spoiled.'
+
+'Spoiled, indeed! I have seen the time you would all have been glad of
+hot potatoes and salt, without milk at all,' was retorted.
+
+William and Davy rushed to the rescue, rightly interpreting the mother's
+frown. 'I'll stay and churn for you,' they cried in a breath.
+
+'You'll do nothing of the kind. If those potatoes are not all in, and
+covered up, they will be ruined. There was a touch of frost this
+morning. And who's to do the milking?' said autocratic Rhys.
+
+Jonet and William proffered their services, only to be rebuffed. This
+was followed by a sharp altercation between the two brothers, widening
+the existing breach, and--though William, out of consideration for his
+mother, who interposed, did not bounce off and absent himself as
+usual--it ended in the despatch of Lewis with a message to Cate, and the
+speedy arrival of the girl, as if she had expected the summons.
+
+Mrs. Edwards was taking a loaf of bread out of the oven when Cate came
+in at the open door, and possibly set the harassed widow's red face down
+to the heat of the oven--not to her temper.
+
+'Lewis do be saying you do be wanting me to churn. I shall be glad to
+help you any way, whatever,' Cate began demurely, just as if she had not
+exchanged a syllable first with Rhys over the wall by the gateway.
+
+'Yes, yes, sure. Mr. Pryse stopped the baking yesterday, and Ales be
+gone to Cardiff, so we are late; and I must have the butter ready for
+to-morrow's market.'
+
+Cate had her hat off with the first words of assent; her bare feet
+tripped lightly across the stone floor. She obtained from the pot on the
+fire a pitcher of warm water, to raise the temperature of the milk, as
+deftly as Ales could have done, and presently the dasher could be heard
+plashing in the churn with regular beat, as if lifted by strong, firm
+hands.
+
+Mrs. Edwards, washing up the dinner things, sighed heavily, as if only
+half-satisfied, for a new perplexity had arisen in debating with herself
+who should go to Caerphilly market on the morrow. Whether she went or
+Rhys, she foresaw the necessity for Cate or _some one_ to remain and
+take the place of Ales. She, however, did not care to leave the girl as
+her own deputy with Rhys at home to come and go at will.
+
+The question was still unsettled when Cate called out that the butter
+had come.
+
+At once Mrs. Edwards stepped into the dairy, and, as if ready for all
+contingencies, bare-legged Cate snatched up a milking-stool and pail,
+and was off, singing as she went; while the other collected the butter
+out of the churn, washed, salted, and moulded it into shape for market.
+
+Back she came in due time, the full pail on her head, the stool tucked
+under one arm, her knitting-pins clicking as rapidly as if she was
+unencumbered.
+
+Mrs. Edwards, moulding her butter at the dairy window, could but admit
+to herself, as she watched her cross the yard with light, firm feet,
+that Rhys might have chosen worse.
+
+That night Cate remained on the farm. It was settled that Rhys was to
+attend Caerphilly market. He was to load the pony and sled with potatoes
+for sale--they were sure to fetch a good price, if only for seed, as
+other farmers were beginning to plant them. He himself was to go on foot
+bearing the egg-and-butter basket, since Breint, who would have carried
+all, was gone.
+
+Cate was up before the lark. Milking was done, breakfast ready, and she,
+bright, brisk, and clean as a new pin by the time Rhys and the rest were
+ready for the morning meal.
+
+She was certainly on her mettle, and Rhys could barely have reached the
+bottom of the hill before the relics of the meal were cleared away,
+fresh fire-balls added to the peat on the hearth, and she ready, as she
+told Mrs. Edwards, to take the place of Ales in the field.
+
+William chuckled, and rubbed his hands together with glee, when he saw
+his mother so reinforced.
+
+He whispered to Jonet, as she followed to pick up the roots he dug out,
+and remove the haulms, which really called for another hand.
+
+Jonet nodded an affirmative.
+
+'Mother,' he cried, 'if Cate will take the spade, you can sit still and
+remove the haulms as Jonet gathers them up. I've got some work to be
+doing that Rhys will not let me undertake. He says I don't know how,
+whatever.'
+
+He had thrown down his spade, and was out of the potato-field,
+overleaping a wall, before his mother had time to question or
+remonstrate.
+
+Evan had kept his eyes here, there, and everywhere. If the troublesome
+goats butted against a wall, and displaced a stone, he repaired the
+breach at once to prevent further damage. Rhys had been less wary, and,
+in his obstinacy, would not allow his youngest brother to see or know
+more than himself.
+
+Consequently, an old greybeard Billy had been allowed to make a gap in
+the garden wall, and, though driven away with a stout broom-handle when
+Ales or her mistress might be there to see, had played havoc among the
+English herbs and flowering plants she was at such pains to rear. Then
+Mr. Billy and his friends had tried their horns on the empty sty, now
+the swine were turned to feed in the autumnal woods, and had done some
+fine damage there.
+
+If Cate handled a spade with the skill and vigour of experience, William
+handled the unhewn stones with the inspiration of genius and long
+practice 'in play.' And he worked as if his life depended on his speed
+and skill.
+
+Rhys made a good market, and came home with self-satisfied complacence
+at a late hour, to sup and turn over his gains to his mother, along with
+the news of the day. But he had no chance of a private word with Cate,
+who had gone home with her father before eight o'clock, well pleased to
+have earned the honest commendation of Mrs. Edwards, in addition to the
+customary 'payment in kind.'
+
+Morning came, noon came, and afternoon was speeding before Rhys
+discovered that the broken-down wall and pig-stye were as whole and
+sound as when new.
+
+He stood before the latter in blank surprise. He had given no orders for
+the repairs.
+
+'Has Morgan the mason been here?' he bawled out after Jonet and William,
+who were off with milking-stools and pails.
+
+'No,' came quickly back over Jonet's shoulder.
+
+'Who has been at work here?'
+
+No audible answer came back this time, but, with a wondrous twinkle in
+her expressive eyes, and an unmistakable grin on her face, Jonet pointed
+with outstretched arm, in silence, to the younger brother striding on
+well in advance.
+
+It was a revelation to Rhys. His countenance fell. The wisdom of the
+world did not rest on his individual shoulders. He stood there amazed,
+hardly sure whether to be vexed or pleased, angry or grateful. Content
+he certainly was not. He had been slyly circumvented, and that was
+irritating, however necessary the repairs had been.
+
+Into the house he strode in quest of his mother. He heard her at work
+outside. Here a fresh enlightenment awaited him. She was endeavouring to
+set her garden beds in order, behind a good firm wall. Her task was no
+longer hopeless; she could sing over her work.
+
+There was little need for Rhys to ask over again 'Who hath done this?'
+
+Still less need for frowns and sullen looks.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+DISCOVERIES.
+
+
+Robert Jones was a childless widower when he first picked up little
+William crying in the lane, and gave him a lift on his donkey. He was
+much older than Ales, but he was not too old to wish he had as smart and
+capable a helpmate on his own hearth, where was only his half-blind
+mother to keep all things fresh and clean. Many had been the sharp play
+of words between him and Ales during her progress from girl to woman,
+and, had not Evan come upon the scene when he did, Robert would
+certainly have made a bid for her favour.
+
+He was one of the first to perceive that the younger man had quite
+spoiled his chances, and was generous enough to stand on one side, and
+keep his disappointment to himself.
+
+So generous was he, that, instead of hailing Evan's mysterious
+disappearance with satisfaction, he stamped about and shook his fist at
+an imaginary 'old Pryse,' as he listened to William's recital, and
+proffered his services to 'poor Ales,' as if the recovery of her lost
+lover did not mean the extinction of the last spark of a chance for
+himself.
+
+William could not have found for Ales a better safeguard on her way, or
+a more zealous and capable assistant in her anxious quest.
+
+In fact, from the time they landed in Cardiff, and he found her a
+lodging with a dealer in peat, etc., who had her supplies from him, he
+took the business pretty well out of her hands, having, during their
+journey, made himself acquainted with Evan's errand and plans.
+
+He argued with her that a strange young woman could not go about the
+streets of a seaport town--though, apart from castle and old monastery,
+Cardiff was but a very small place in 1733--without exciting attention
+by her inquiries, and defeating her own purpose, whether Evan was
+keeping out of the way, or was kept out of the way by others, even if
+she escaped personal insult.
+
+Whereas he, well known, and with his customary load of peat to dispose
+of, could go from place to place and pick up, in gossip, without
+exciting the suspicion of Mr. Pryse, or any one else, facts which might
+be withheld from direct inquiry.
+
+And so well did he fulfil his mission that, when the last rays of the
+setting sun crimsoned the river and the fading woods of the Taff Valley
+on the Friday evening, Ales, weary and dispirited, but no longer
+ashamed, rode up the stony hillpath to the farm, on the back of good old
+Breint.
+
+Robert Jones had turned off towards his own home, with his team and his
+return load, after a very curious disclaimer of thanks.
+
+Part of that load consisted of a new turf-cutting spade and a small
+glazed window for his hut. His newly-discovered need for these took him
+among dealers in hardware and carpenters, until he found what else he
+went for. He drove hard bargains, and paid in part with winter store of
+peat; but he carried away more than the dealers supposed. In the one
+place he observed a full set of implements for husbandry put aside, and
+roughly labelled, 'Evan Evans, Castella, _Paid_,' and was told they had
+so lain, 'lumbering up the place,' for fully three weeks, the buyer not
+having turned up to claim them, although he had stated he intended to
+take them up the river by boat when the tide served.
+
+A crusty carpenter, who had two glass windows exposed for sale, was glad
+to let one of them go as a bargain, seeing that the man for whom they
+were made in a hurry three weeks before had disappeared mysteriously,
+and not even gone back to his inn, on St. Mary's Quay, for his horse.
+
+That bit of information about the inn had sent the turf-cutter tramping
+across the town with his beasts, sure, at least, of much-needed rest and
+provender, all houses of the kind, in those days of horseback travel and
+pack-horse conveyance, having ample stable accommodation.
+
+A warm supper, more plentiful than dainty, had been supplied to him in
+the common room, odorous of tobacco-smoke, rum, _cwrw_, tar, and salt
+water.
+
+Presently a voice he knew hailed him from out the smoke-reek.
+
+'Do that be you, Robert Jones? 'Deed, you're the very man to tell the
+landlord here who owns an old horse left here three weeks ago by a
+farming-man, who called himself Evan Evans, of Eglwysilan, and went off
+without paying his score, look you!'
+
+'Ah, how did he go off?'
+
+'Queerly. He said as he was going to hire a boat to carry the horse and
+some goods of his, as he was be taking to Castella, across the river in
+the morning, but he never did come back here.'
+
+'No,' chimed in the landlord, 'nor never did mean it, or he would not
+have been going off in the _Osprey's_ boat, as he surely did.'
+
+''Deed no! not if he did go of his own free will,' came from a feeble
+voice in a corner; 'but I've heard as'--
+
+'Sure, and didn't Mr. Pryse be saying he was be running off with a lot
+of money?' again struck in the landlord, drowning the words of the
+previous speaker.
+
+On this ensued a warm controversy, in which some dark hints were thrown
+out respecting the _Osprey_, and Mr. Pryse's connection therewith, all
+bearing on the strangeness of Evan's disappearance.
+
+Listening Robert Jones had come to the conclusion that the landlord was
+under Mr. Pryse's finger and thumb, and cautiously made no comment. But
+he kept his eye on the owner of the feeble voice, and, when he went out,
+followed.
+
+He had found the man shifty, timid, and unwilling to give an unspoken
+opinion to a stranger.
+
+So, too, were the tarry loungers upon the quay the next morning.
+
+'Evans _might_ have been kidnapped and carried off against his will, the
+crew of the _Osprey_ were a queer lot, look you; or he might be running
+away, as Mr. Pryse did say--they could not tell.'
+
+Mr. Pryse might have frozen free speech, but Robert Jones had noted
+shrugs and nods more expressive than words. Then the application of two
+silver pennies to the palm of a timorous lad opened his lips to tell
+that he had seen a strange man, looking for a big boat, hustled into the
+boat of the _Osprey_, and held down whilst the crew rowed out to the
+schooner in the bay. And, when Ales herself discovered that Evan had
+bought both a wedding-ring and a brooch for her, the conclusion was
+obvious.
+
+She had shed her tears in the three weeks gone. She returned to the farm
+in tearless, but gnawing, uncertainty as to her Evan's fate, yet proud
+of her ability to clear his honest name.
+
+She was somewhat incoherent in her story, but Robert Jones an hour or so
+later backed it up with fuller details, and his own convictions.
+
+'Yes, yes, indeed, Evan Evans did go about his business like an honest
+man. There be still the spades and things he paid for, and I have a
+glass window he left his God-penny[12] on. He would have kept all the
+money if he intended running away. No, no, he did be paying all the
+rent, Mrs. Edwards, whatever Mr. Pryse do say.'
+
+''Deed, it do seem like it. But why should he be "pressed" on board?'
+she queried. 'There be no war now.'
+
+'Why should any wicked deed be done?' put in Ales. 'A bad man do have
+his reasons ready.'
+
+'Yes, yes, and one evil head moves many evil hands, Mrs. Edwards,' added
+Jones, 'if, as is hinted by them as daren't speak their minds, Mr. Pryse
+do have dealings with the gruff captain of the _Osprey_ for something
+fiery besides his lordship's coal. Then, smuggling a stout-limbed fellow
+or two on board might be winked at, if it was no part of the bargain.
+And I do be telling Ales not to think they would kill Evan. They want
+living men for sailors, not dead ones.'
+
+'Then God may bring him back to me some time, and I will pray day and
+night for him. Yes, yes, though the day be long it will have an evening.
+And let not Mr. Pryse be thinking to escape--
+
+
+     "The later that God's vengeance is,
+     The heavier far and sorer 'tis,"'
+
+
+broke from Ales, her eyes and cheeks kindling as with a spirit of
+prophecy, as she hurried from the kitchen into the dark storeroom beyond
+to contend with her own agony in secret.
+
+Then came a reckoning with Jones for Breint's keep at the inn (Ales had
+cleared Evan's score as a matter of honour), and whilst settling that
+with Mrs. Edwards, it occurred to him that her sons had pursued their
+occupations in uncommon silence during this statement of facts and
+fancies, especially Rhys, who seemed more interested in disentangling
+the locks of wool he was combing by the fireside (his comb-pot on the
+hearth) than on disentangling what seemed an unaccountable plot against
+his mother's tried and faithful servant.
+
+William, knitting a long blue stocking in the opposite corner, had put
+in an occasional word, but even he did not appear at ease.
+
+Davy's wooden soles had been heard clattering outside along with sounds
+indicative of more care for recovered Breint than the absent Evan.
+
+He walked in from the farmyard just in time for the supper of hot
+leek-porridge Jonet poured scalding hot into their bowls, not forgetting
+one for the turf-cutter, who sat down without apology, for the odour was
+appetising.
+
+Again he noticed that Rhys and William preserved a sullen silence
+towards each other, and wondered what fresh quarrel there had been.
+
+When supper was over, and he rose to depart, William followed him.
+
+No sooner were they out of earshot than the boy began to lay bare his
+grievance in tones of wounded self-esteem.
+
+'Look you,' said he, 'since Evan went, Old Billy has been suffered to
+butt at the walls, and never a stone had been put back to keep him from
+the styes, till they did be like to tumble down. So yesterday, while
+Rhys was at market, I did work till the sweat poured off me, and mended
+them all, thinking I would let Rhys see what I could do. And since he
+found out this afternoon what I had been doing, he has never spoken one
+word to me, whatever. If I had knocked the walls down he could not have
+looked more surly. It's enough to make one run away, it is! And if it
+was not for mother and Jonet, I would be running away, 'deed I would.'
+
+'Hush, Willem, don't be saying that; runaway sons make sorrowful
+mothers. Don't be thinking of doing anything rash, anything you cannot
+be asking the blessing of Almighty God upon. Perhaps you neglected
+something Rhys expected done, of more consequence than a dry wall.'
+
+'Sure, Cate Griffith did be digging the potatoes. She could not build up
+walls. I do believe Rhys is vexed just because mother was so well
+pleased, and began to put her garden right that Billy and the pigs had
+spoiled. Rhys would have liked Evan better if mother had found fault
+with him.'
+
+The boy's bitter attempt at self-justification was checked by his mature
+friend.
+
+'Faults are thick where love is thin, Willem. You are only a boy and
+your brother is a man. It is not for you to go your own way and disobey
+wilfully. But I will look at your handiwork in the morning, when I bring
+the lime for the land; and, perhaps, be saying a word to bring Rhys to
+reason. Good-night, Willem. Go to bed peacefully. And don't be building
+up a wall of stony thoughts against your brother, don't.'
+
+These were his parting words to the chafing lad, as they stood by the
+gateway, but, as he descended the hill in the full light of the moon, he
+said to himself, 'Better repair a breach between brothers than build up
+a wall to repel a fancied enemy.'
+
+It was in this spirit the man addressed himself to Rhys the next
+morning, whilst helping Lewis to transfer the lime from the panniers to
+the freshly-dug potato ground, and the unturned stubble of oats and
+barley. He said he had observed signs of discontent between the brothers
+the previous night, and on other occasions, and expressed a desire to
+know if any real cause for discord existed. It was so very serious a
+thing for brothers in one house to bicker and quarrel; small differences
+were so liable to grow into great ones, even to enmity and hatred.
+
+Rhys listened uneasily, fidgeted, puckered his brows, and at last jerked
+out, 'Look you, Robert Jones, that boy Willem is the plague of my life.
+He will not take orders from me. And who else should give orders if I am
+to manage the farm? Davy and Jonet obey. But he do think of nothing but
+picking up stones and building; and that will not make a good farmer or
+till the land, or pay the rent. He was mending walls on Thursday when he
+should have been digging potatoes. We may thank Cate Griffith they were
+all up and safe from last night's frost. She took up the spade he threw
+down.'
+
+'Ah, well, Rhys, all the world are not farmers. Cate's father is a
+weaver. I cut turf, and sell lime and culm and aught else, to turn an
+honest penny. But let me see what sort of a young builder you have on
+the farm. You know I do be going about the country and use my eyes, so I
+know good walls from bad ones.'
+
+'Sure, they do be well enough for a boy's work,' half contemptuously
+admitted Rhys, whilst pointing out the repairs in walls and sties.
+
+Jones gave them more than a cursory examination.
+
+'Yes, yes, Rhys. But they do be "well enough" for a _man's_ work, that
+they do. The stones are well fitted and firm. You owe the boy thanks,
+not blame. Don't you be for thwarting Willem, or you may be spoiling a
+good builder to make a poor farmer. A sound fence is a farmer's friend.
+Let him keep your fences sound, and he will help to pay the rent, 'deed
+he will.'
+
+'I don't see how.'
+
+'Your eyes are blinded by prejudice, man. Would not a stray cow, or hog,
+or pony that found a gap ready, do more damage to crops in a day than
+you could repair in a month?'
+
+This was not to be gainsaid. But when the turf-cutter urged William's
+claim to just consideration and recognition of his service, the pride of
+Rhys was up in alarm for his own authority.
+
+'He is such a boy,' he argued.
+
+'No more a boy than you were, Rhys, when you first tried to fill your
+dead father's place, and told your mother you were "old enough to do
+your duty." Have you forgotten that? Or are you _younger_ than you were
+then?'
+
+Whether he had forgotten, or did not choose to remember, he turned off
+with a light laugh, and the remark, 'I'm not doing my duty in idling
+here.'
+
+But conscience is a mill that grinds at all hours, and unsought, and
+Robert Jones had set the wheels in motion.
+
+'Willem,' said the peat-cutter to the depressed boy, just before he
+cracked his whip to set his unloaded team in motion downhill, 'if you
+build up your life as well as you have built up your garden wall, you'll
+do. It is firm and compact, and the stones are set evenly together. But
+strife between brothers is a bad foundation to build upon. And it is not
+for a lad of your age to be unruly, and oppose the brother who has so
+long been working for all of you. There is time enough before you to
+build walls or churches, or what you will; but you have none to lose if
+you would bind the bond of brotherhood around you, or lay the foundation
+of a Christian life, look you.'
+
+William's eyes brightened, and his chest expanded under his Saturday's
+sullied smock-frock, as his early friend commended his handiwork, for
+
+
+     'Praise is pleasanter than honey,'
+
+
+and hitherto he had not been cloyed with the sweetmeat. But his aspect
+changed. He did not relish the bitter dose of advice mingled with the
+honey, for his whole soul was in rebellion.
+
+Yet, swift and sharp as the man's whip crack, memory brought back those
+other words to the same purport the stranger, Mr. Morris, had spoken
+long ago, and every hoof-beat of mule or ass seemed to hammer them into
+his brain.
+
+Far down the steep hill were beasts and driver before William roused
+from his reverie, and rushed after them, shouting as he went. The man
+turned.
+
+'What is it, Willem?'
+
+'Can you teach me to count?'
+
+'Yes, up to a hundred, in tens. That is the way I count my peat.'
+
+'Oh, I can be counting that as I knit.'
+
+'Ah, then, if you do be wanting to reckon properly, and do sums with
+figures, you had better be asking Owen Griffith; he do be clever at
+that. I will speak to him for you.'
+
+''Deed, I would be so glad.'
+
+Robert Jones was as good as his word. Owen's cottage was not on his
+direct road, but he did not mind going out of his way to do a kindness.
+
+The weaver had just taken a finished web of blue flannel out of his
+loom, and sat smoking a long pipe on the bench outside.
+
+After the first salutation, the turf-cutter began by saying, 'Have you
+seen the dry wall Willem Edwards have been building up so cleverly?'
+
+'Sure to goodness, no. Yet he did always have a notion that way. I have
+heard Rhys and Cate be laughing over it many a time.'
+
+''Deed, yes, Owen, but it's not to be laughed at. That boy have a head,
+look you. I've seen walls built and mended less securely by old hands
+before now.'
+
+'Sure now! You don't say so? I wish he would come and repair mine. It's
+been tumbling down, stone by stone, waiting till Morgan the mason did be
+coming round.'
+
+'Well, you ask Willem. And if you would be offering to teach him to
+reckon up with figures, he would be proud and pleased to build it up.
+'Deed he would. He do just be asking me to teach him. But you go looking
+at that wall of his. Willem do want encouraging, not laughing at. He
+will build up more than a broken-down wall some day.--Shall you be
+wanting peat or lime next week?'
+
+'Ah, yes; and if you think Willem can mend the wall you can bring a sled
+of stones as well.'
+
+The next day, on the way from church, Owen Griffith got William by his
+side, and set him counting the trees by the wayside, and the sheep on
+the hills, as preliminary to lessons in arithmetic, but nothing said he
+of any broken walls.
+
+He left that for the afternoon, when he and Cate walked up to the farm,
+ostensibly to learn what news Ales had brought from Cardiff.
+
+Over all that he shook his head, uncertain what to make of it, though he
+said, 'It do look bad, it do.'
+
+But there was nothing uncertain in his exclamation of surprise at the
+firmly repaired walls Mrs. Edwards showed so proudly as the work of her
+youngest son.
+
+It led to the open proposal that William should restore his fences to
+condition in return for lessons in arithmetic, and to Mrs. Edwards'
+consent to that use of his time.
+
+Rhys had strolled away with Cate to talk over the deferred prospect of
+their marriage, and so did not hear of this arrangement until
+afterwards, when, for reasons of his own, he thought best to keep the
+peace.
+
+It was the small beginning of greater things.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[12] God-penny--a deposit.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+PROPER TOOLS.
+
+
+Ales had resumed her work on the farm, but not with the spirit and
+vivacity of old. She had been wont to sing over her work, and had a
+store of old Welsh ballads in her memory. But the song-bird mourned in
+silence for the mate torn away so ruthlessly, and, as weeks and months
+and years rolled on in the same drear monotony of hopelessness, her
+heart grew colder and heavier, and her prayers became as the very
+wailings of despair.
+
+It cut her to the soul to hear Rhys grumbling, as he did, at the money
+filched from them to pay, not only the rent Evan should have paid, but
+the heavy costs of a seizure in addition; and she more than once
+resolved to quit the farm when the year expired.
+
+Second thoughts, however, suggested that nothing would suit the young
+man better, and his very grumbling might have that end in view; for,
+once rid of her, he could seek the necessary consent to bring in a wife
+with a good grace.
+
+He had not improved in temper, certainly. It had irritated him to hear
+William lauded for the very proclivities he had held of so small
+account, nay, turned into ridicule.
+
+It was no satisfaction to have a brother so much younger competent to
+enlarge and raise the walls of the sheepfold, as he did, before a second
+winter set in. What though a mason's charges were saved, was not the
+saving at the greater cost of his own supremacy?
+
+And in the long winter nights when he and Davy sorted fleeces or combed
+the wool, or tended the dye-pot on the fire; when Ales taught Jonet to
+twirl the flaxen thread drawn from the distaff, so as to set the spindle
+dancing on the floor to the tune of the mother's industrious
+spinning-wheel, how it tried his patience to see William making figures
+and calculations on a board, with chalk or ruddle by the light of the
+candle, whilst the knitting-pins, which should have been earning money,
+lay idle by his side.
+
+There are men ready to perform generous acts, who are flagrantly unjust,
+but cannot see it. Robert Jones had urged Rhys Edwards to 'be just.' He
+should have said 'be generous,' and Rhys might have responded to the
+appeal. He resented the imputation of injustice.
+
+Yet he denied to his brother the meed of praise his service merited; he
+begrudged him the time to acquire the common rules of simple arithmetic;
+perhaps because he felt it was a step to something beyond his own
+attainment. He counted not the money saved in masonry as money earned.
+He might have been content had William been as passively submissive as
+Davy and Jonet, but he found in him a spirit boldly daring to cope with
+his own, and it stung him to find the boy upheld in his resistance.
+
+So years crept on. The third winter passed, the snows melted, the roads
+were free for traffic, the river sang a pĉan to approaching spring, the
+pink and brown buds were bursting into green, song birds were flitting
+and fluttering about the eaves and boughs, all was life and activity
+upon the farm. The _Osprey_ had never again put into port at Cardiff,
+where Mr. Pryse bit his nails and snarled more cantankerously than ever,
+and nothing had been heard of Evan. Ales lost heart, she did not sing
+with the birds; but William, no longer snubbed, worked on the farm with
+the best, until another barrier rose between himself and Rhys, in the
+shape of another stone wall.
+
+Hedges have now superseded walls in many parts of Glamorganshire; but at
+the date of this narrative, the fields and lanes were universally
+bounded by what are known as '_dry walls_,' and still they serve as
+fences on the uplands.
+
+By 'dry walls' are to be understood walls built without mortar or
+cement, of irregular, unhewn flagstones, so put together, so wedged in
+one with another, as to stand firm where a cemented wall might give way
+exposed to the high winds of those elevated regions, the very crevices
+allowing the blasts to pass through, and so reduce the pressure on the
+mass. Such are the walls in Craven and other parts of northern England.
+
+Yet it is no uncommon thing for the coping-stones to be hurled away in
+a fierce gale, or for large portions of such walls to be blown down, as
+came to pass on Brookside Farm that gusty spring.
+
+Here was an opportunity for William to turn his talent to account and
+save his mother's pocket, as be sure he did.
+
+So far, so good. Rhys made no objection, and Mrs. Edwards was well
+pleased. Davy had begun to feel proud of his brother.
+
+But it so happened that Robert Jones, whose window had long before been
+fitted in by William, came to seek his services, not merely to repair a
+breach, but to enclose a portion of ground as a stone yard.
+
+Rhys, then engaged sowing barley on last year's turnip ground, looked as
+black as two thunder-clouds rolled into one, and without mincing his
+words gave a decided refusal.
+
+'Willem is not a public stonemason, Robert Jones. He is now dibbling in
+the potato-sets, and cannot be spared. You asked me to "be just"; do you
+think you are just in seeking to draw him away from the farm at this
+busy season?' and with a very strong oath he swore 'Willem should _not_
+build walls for him or any one else.'
+
+But the leader of the peat-cutter's team happened to carry a resonant
+bell, as did the leading beast of all packhorse teams, in order to warn
+other teamsters, or the drivers of cattle or carriages, that the narrow
+roadway was blocked, and one or the other must wait in the nearest
+broadened space provided as a refuge until the advancing team had
+passed and left the road clear. Such open grassy spots may still be seen
+in England's narrow by-ways, and there gipsies make their camps. Nay,
+even in the heart of busy London, old Paternoster Row is so provided
+with spaces where two carts may pass abreast.
+
+The bell, set ringing through the clear March air with every motion of
+the mule's head, brought William leaping over runnel, ridge and furrow,
+and dividing fence to greet his old and true friend.
+
+The voice of Rhys, ever loud and authoritative, now raised and vehement,
+reached William as he came bounding along.
+
+'Who says I shall not build walls for any one?' he cried. 'I _will_, and
+no one here shall stop me. Do you think I mean to dig and delve all my
+life, and be labourer to you?'
+
+'Labourer to me, you jackanapes? Do you think your intermittent labour
+pays for your sustenance? But if you quit the farm this day to go
+wall-building, you may quit it altogether. I am not going to wear my
+life away to support you in idleness. Cyphering at night, piling up
+stones by day, rambling off to Caerphilly Castle when you should be at
+work--what sort of labour do you call that?'
+
+'Head-work; of no account with you. But, look you, I'll go and come as I
+please, and build walls if I please. And I don't be owning you for
+master. If we can but find the old lease, it may turn out the youngest
+son is heir and not the eldest. But let me tell you that for the toss
+up of a silver penny I'd quit the farm for ever, only I know that's what
+you do be wanting. You would be glad to get either me or Ales out to
+make room for Cate. But while we stay, mother do be mistress, and shall
+be.'
+
+For a moment Rhys seemed dumbfounded. Then he sprang upon his brother,
+and grappled with him as if he would have borne him to the earth.
+
+The fifteen years lad was thick set and sturdy, and stood his ground
+well, but he was no match for the man of more toughened frame and
+indurated muscle.
+
+It would have gone badly with the younger had not the turf-cutter
+interposed, and, by sheer force, thrust them apart.
+
+'What!' cried he, 'are you two brothers so jealous of each other you
+would strive like Cain and Abel? Shame on you both! Would you bring
+death and sorrow on your mother's hearth once more?'
+
+They stood panting, but abashed, as he proceeded--
+
+'Surely, what with one loss after another--the rent money unaccounted
+for when Evan disappeared, the cruel bill for costs, the raising of the
+rent, the missing lease--the poor widow do be passing through a sea of
+trouble, with cares enough to drown her, without you two, who should be
+her help and comfort, adding to the load. Are you not ashamed?'
+
+'It be Rhys' fault!' 'It be Willem's fault!' they cried simultaneously,
+alike moved by the reference to their mother, whom they loved with deep
+affection.
+
+'You are alike to blame. Each one has some reason on his side; but, let
+me tell you, lads, it is always the one most in the wrong who is the
+last to give in. Now, shake hands and be friends. I came here thinking
+to be doing you all a service, for it would pay better for Willem to be
+building walls than doing common field-work. But I don't be wanting to
+breed dissension between you, so I will be getting Morgan the stonemason
+to build my wall.'
+
+William's lips were set close.
+
+The brothers looked at each other; Rhys wavered. The reference to
+'better pay' had struck a vibrating chord in his breast.
+
+'If'--he began.
+
+'_I_ will build your wall, look you, pay or no pay, Robert Jones. But
+you will not be wanting me to-day, whatever?'
+
+'No, not until next week; but fair work must have fair pay. Yet, what
+say you, Rhys?'
+
+Here was a loophole for Rhys to slip through. 'Oh, indeed, if you don't
+be wanting to call him off his work to-day or to-morrow, it may be
+managed.'
+
+So it was amicably settled, and when the turf-cutter went his way,
+William was on his knees helping Rhys to gather up what he could of the
+barley spilled from his seed-wallet during their unbrotherly struggle.
+
+It so happened that the following Sunday the vicar took for his text, 2
+Peter i. 5, 6, and 7, dwelling especially on the last--'_And to
+godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity_'--in
+such manner that both Rhys and William took it to heart, imagining he
+had heard of their antagonism, and was addressing his sermon especially
+to them. No doubt there were others in the congregation to whom the
+sermon might apply with equal force, but they two held their heads down,
+as if to hide the crimson flush that mounted to the roots of their brown
+hair, and fidgeted uneasily upon their high-backed seat.
+
+Anyway that was the end of their open strife. And when, at the close of
+another week, William carried home to his mother, in good hard coin,
+more than double the hire of a field-labourer, reserving a very small
+portion for himself, there was nothing said by way of objection to his
+craze for building, or his efforts to attain a more complete knowledge
+of arithmetical calculation.
+
+Few persons ever found their way to Brookside Farm except on business,
+fewer still cared to ask who kept the fences and outhouses in such good
+order; and though Owen Griffith's house was by the roadside, ordinary
+passers-by were not likely to stop and put such questions, even if they
+gave the walls a second glance.
+
+But Robert Jones had become a thriving man of business. He had increased
+the number of his team, and still travelled the country round with culm
+and peat, and clay and lime. There was scarcely a farmer or cottager on
+all Eglwysilan mountain, or near it, who did not on occasion call at his
+place, either to carry away some of his necessary commodities, or to
+leave a special order. And these were the very men to whom fences were
+of importance, the very men to know a good, compact wall when they saw
+it.
+
+Jones had a long head. He had a double motive when he began to deal in
+broken flagstone, and invited William Edwards to build up an enclosing
+wall for his stores. He knew the wall would attract attention, bring the
+self-taught young mason into notice, and help to sell his stone.
+
+The event justified his far-seeing calculations. Before another spring
+brought William's sixteenth birthday, he was known to be the best
+builder of dry walls within a wide area, and his services were in
+frequent request.
+
+There was no more snubbing under his mother's roof, for with a very
+small reserve for personal needs, he poured all his earnings into her
+lap as to a common store; and rising in estimation, he was thanked with
+heartfelt satisfaction, so material and so necessary were added gains to
+meet increased demands, extortionate Mr. Pryse, sneering and grinning at
+their inability to confront him with their lease, having raised the rent
+a second time, and threatened still harsher measures.
+
+And no one now lent a more willing hand to any work upon the farm, when
+not otherwise employed, than thoughtful William, who saw with pain the
+streaks of white interlacing his mother's once black hair.
+
+But William Edwards was not content to be a mere builder of dry walls.
+He looked at the masonry of the church and of Caerphilly Castle, and was
+conscious he had much to learn. How to enlarge his fund of knowledge was
+a problem. But he was not easily daunted.
+
+One Sunday he observed a cow and sundry sheep trespassing on the
+vicar's glebe, having taken a wide gap in the wall as an invitation. No
+sooner was service concluded than he marched up boldly to the vicar,
+reminded him of promised help, explained his desire to master higher
+forms of arithmetic than Owen Griffith had ability to teach, and
+modestly offered to repair the glebe wall if the vicar would accept his
+services. The Rev. John Smith smiled, and assented readily. William set
+to work upon the wall the next day, going into the vicarage parlour when
+candles were lighted, and making the best use of the privilege accorded.
+Long after the wall shut out four-footed intruders, William might be
+seen on his way to the vicarage, after a hard day's work, once or twice
+a week, a bit of candle stuck in a hollowed turnip serving to light him
+home when there was no moon.
+
+It was about this time a gleam of stronger light shone on his darkness.
+
+He was engaged enclosing a fresh field for a farmer about two miles from
+Caerphilly. Raising his head, and giving his arms a stretch, his
+attention was arrested by a noise there was no mistaking. There was a
+blacksmith's shop by the roadside, and almost in front of it a load of
+stones was being dumped down from a cart, or what then answered to the
+name in that wild region. It was little more than a sled, low to the
+ground, but running on broad wheels or rollers of solid wood, girthed
+with iron bands and drawn by four horses.
+
+His curiosity was excited. A group of working men were there. What were
+they about to do? One man was measuring the ground, the others, doffing
+their coats, rolled up their shirt sleeves, and also set to work.
+
+A trench was dug along the lines marked out. And now two mules came up
+with laden panniers. William overleapt his own low wall and drew nearer
+to observe, his pulses beating rapidly. He was coming on the secret he
+had so long panted to learn.
+
+A heap of sand was emptied on the ground, and hollowed out like a huge
+shallow bowl. Into this was poured lime from the other panniers, and
+then a man carrying a pail brought water from a wayside runnel and
+poured it on the lime. There was no need to tell whence rose that volume
+of steam to one who whitewashed his mother's farm buildings so
+repeatedly. But the stirring up and mixing of mortar was new to him. And
+what was that soft fluff shaken out of a bag when the steam began to
+subside? It was something with which the wind made free and blew about
+almost like thistle-down--ay, almost into his own face. He caught a
+loosened tuft; examined it. It could be nothing but cow's hair. So that
+was how the mortar was bound together!
+
+Anon began a chipping and ringing of steel upon stone, that was, and was
+not, new to him.
+
+Nearer and nearer he drew, yet afraid of exciting observation. He knew
+his own purpose, and felt as if the busy masons would know it too, and
+drive him away before his object was attained.
+
+He watched the mason chip and dress the stones to shape until the one
+fitted its fellows, and they were laid side by side in a bed of mortar
+within the trench, and fresh mortar spread on these with a trowel to
+receive a second layer of stones for the foundation.
+
+Then he went back to his own dry-wall building. But never had wall taken
+him so long before, for day by day he watched the masons at their work,
+and day by day learned something fresh--even the uses of square and
+plummet--until a well-built farrier's shed adjoined the blacksmith's
+forge, with smoothly-rounded pillars bearing up the roof.
+
+He had learned the secret of the masons' tools, primarily the hammer,
+with which the stones were chipped and dressed. Unlike his own, it was
+steeled at _both_ ends, one end shaped like an axe.
+
+From a smith in Caerphilly he obtained just such another before the week
+was out.
+
+Brief apprenticeship! No premium paid! No years of servitude to a
+master! God had gifted him with peculiar faculties. He had a special
+bias; he had also intelligence, perseverance, and determination to
+succeed. He had achieved so far a measure of success.
+
+He began to speculate on success he could not measure.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+IN THE GRIP OF A STRONG HAND.
+
+
+Five years had come and gone since that sad October when Evan Evans rode
+away from Brookside Farm buoyant with hope and expectation, yet from
+that hour no word or sign of his existence, no token of his death, had
+come to set feverish doubt at rest.
+
+They had been five worrying and wearying years. For although William
+brought home his larger earnings to the common store, and his brothers
+did their best upon the farm, and there had been none but ordinary
+losses, the abstracted money had never been replaced. Mr. Pryse had
+prevented that with his extortionate raising of the rent. Then he had
+taken to visiting the farm at intervals, making free comments with
+sarcastic flings at Rhys, and cutting allusions to the still-missing
+Evans, and to the missing lease, which he insisted the man must have
+carried off, if it ever existed.
+
+Ales had much to bear through it all. Every doubtful or stinging
+allusion to Evan cut her like a knife. But deep in her heart, as in a
+well of truth and faith, she cherished a belief that in God's good time
+he would come back to comfort her, and confound his traducers. And so
+year after year she kept her place in spite of the black looks of Rhys
+and Cate.
+
+Robert Jones would gladly have made another home for her. But Ales only
+shook her head, and said with a heavy sigh: 'What would I do if Evan
+came back? No, better remain for ever unmarried than for ever marred.'
+And finding her constancy unshaken, the man brought an orphan niece into
+his cottage to care for himself and his mother, a tacit confession that
+his suit was hopeless.
+
+Some such proverbial answer Mrs. Edwards gave to Rhys about this time
+when he urged how much better it would be to have Cate always at hand as
+his wife, than to be paying for her frequent services, when William was
+away wall-building, as was often the case. 'Besides, mother, you cannot
+be expecting to keep Jonet always at home,' said he. 'Thomas Williams is
+beginning to talk to her, and it is clear he do be thinking of taking a
+wife, and he five years younger than myself, look you.'
+
+'It will take a long while thinking, if he do be thinking of Jonet for a
+wife, and him not even got his workshop built,' replied the mother with
+decision. 'Your patience will hardly hold out till Jonet makes way for
+Cate. But, indeed, there do be no room here for a wife. And Cate must
+know it.'
+
+'We might make room, if you were willing,' he persisted. 'We need only
+be clearing out the fleeces, pots, pans, and other lumber, and shut in
+the place at the back with a bit of wall and a door, and there will be a
+room as big as the dairy.'
+
+'Indeed, and where would you be for putting what you call "lumber"?'
+
+Rhys hesitated, pushed his fingers through his loose brown hair two or
+three times, as if to rake up an idea. What he called lumber were
+household goods and utensils in common request, fire-balls and turf
+included.
+
+'Oh, sure, I can be talking to Willem about that;' and he strode away,
+with bent brows, leaving his mother to finish her whitewashing of the
+cottage front, and to digest his suggestion at leisure.
+
+The Thomas Williams to whom Rhys had referred was the second son of the
+carpenter who had laughed in his sleeve at Mrs. Edwards' new notion of
+housing and scrubbing her swine, but who had ceased to laugh at
+improvements that had brought him in work all round. In fact, he had
+enclosed his workshop and glazed his small windows, not to be behind his
+precocious son.
+
+That son, Thomas Williams, was fully five years older than William
+Edwards, but the two had been drawn together from the fact that both
+indulged in original ideas, and smarted under a want of appreciation at
+home.
+
+Thus it happened that when Rhys gave his mother a hint that Thomas
+Williams was making up to Jonet, his own brother was engaged in rearing
+a workshop for the young carpenter in close proximity to the premises of
+Robert Jones in the Aber Valley. At home he had been told he was too
+young to set up for himself, but he had served his seven years'
+apprenticeship to his father, had saved a little money, and was not so
+young as the self-taught mason, who was making _his_ first experiment
+in house-building for him.
+
+On his father's hearth he was scoffed at for trusting so much as the
+raising of a workshop to the untried hands of a mere boy. So of his
+plans or his ulterior intentions he said little there, desirous to
+escape inevitable sneers and discouragement.
+
+It was at Brookside Farm by the fireside after dark, the two young
+fellows had laid their heads together, and matured their plans, long
+before they were put into operation, and it was there the original idea
+of a workshop and living-room behind developed into something more.
+
+It was there, night after night, whilst Rhys was down the hill at the
+weaver's, that Thomas Williams had unsuspected opportunities for seeing
+Jonet's fitness for wifehood. True, he had noticed her bright black eyes
+and hair, her clear complexion and pleasing smile, her neat attire and
+dapper figure, times out of mind on Sundays, and had thought how lithe
+and supple were her movements, how modest her demeanour. But it was on
+her mother's hearth, whether knitting, or spinning from her distaff,
+chatting all the while with one or other, and making much of her
+brothers, or when helping Ales to prepare supper, that he saw how ready
+she was to make herself useful and agreeable as well.
+
+So it was that, out of the first design for a mere workshop, gradually a
+plan for the construction of a whole house shaped itself.
+
+William Edwards was short and sturdy; his round face had become square,
+his forehead broad, his jaw inclined to be massive; his keen grey eyes
+were deep set and thoughtful, his nose was large with broad nostrils,
+his dark brown hair crisp as a crown--at seventeen a premature man of
+thought and action, with strong, capable hands.
+
+He was a thorough contrast to his friend, who was tall and slight, had a
+fair clear skin, with a tinge of healthy colour in his cheeks, and a
+crop of wavy auburn hair; in short, a handsome young fellow.
+
+Handsome enough to attract Jonet, and more than Jonet; but not to lead
+Mrs. Edwards to countenance too much intimacy until assured that neither
+her son nor his friend had miscalculated his skill or its results.
+
+Certainly William Edwards had not.
+
+Passers-by, or people having business with the turf-cutter, lingered to
+watch the young mason at his work, as the walls gradually rose above the
+foundations, until firm, even, and compact as if laid by a master-hand,
+with a couple of rooms in the rear and an undivided attic over all, the
+whole stood fair to view. But even before Thomas Williams had laid the
+last rafter, or the thatched roof was on, or the casements were glazed,
+the owner might be seen at his bench plying plane or saw to make the
+whole substantial and complete.
+
+The situation had been well selected. Proximity to Robert Jones'
+premises was as good as a modern advertisement to both young builders.
+Then it was on the main road to church, and was certain to arrest
+attention and inquiry.
+
+Rhys stood before it the Sunday after completion, along with Cate and
+her father, feeling something like pride in his self-taught brother for
+the first time. He had taken a critical survey of all, back and front,
+when he heard Robert Jones calling out to him from his own low doorway--
+
+'Look you there now! What do you think of that? Didn't I be telling you
+not to spoil a good builder to make a bad farmer?'
+
+'Indeed you did, and I think you were right. But where he did be
+learning it all does be puzzling me.'
+
+'Ah, well, you wait and see. The little one will be the big one in the
+end.'
+
+The rest of the family had come up, Mrs. Edwards between William and
+Davy, Jonet having dropped behind with handsome Thomas Williams.
+
+Congratulations came thick and fast, even from strange voices.
+
+Rhys grasped his brother by the hand, and pressed it warmly.
+
+'I did never be thinking you could do this, Willem, whatever. I do be
+pleased and proud to see it.'
+
+''Deed, I did be knowing it long ago, and so did Robert Jones,' put in
+Owen Griffith.
+
+'I wish I had known it. But where did you be learning to build like
+_this_?' asked Rhys, who held his dry walls of small account.
+
+'Sure, and I did be studying at Caerphilly Castle, where you did be
+thinking me idling. Grand masonry does be there!' replied William.
+
+Mrs. Edwards' eyes were swimming with tears. She saw a future before her
+son, and silently she thanked God.
+
+'Will you like to be looking inside?' said the owner, who had unfastened
+the door and held it open whilst Mrs. Edwards and Jonet walked in.
+
+The floor of the front shop was already thickly carpeted with curly
+shavings, and crowded with odd pieces of oak and pine shaped and trimmed
+ready to put together, a rush basket of tools was set upon the workman's
+bench under the window, pieces of timber were reared against the bare
+walls, and there was already an air of business about the place.
+
+'It is all rough and bare at present,' said Thomas Williams
+apologetically. 'When the walls do be dry enough to whitewash, and
+these'--pointing to the incongruous pile upon the floor--'are made into
+stout seats and tables, and my tools do be set in order, as well as the
+house, you must be coming to look again, and rest on your way from
+church.'
+
+'No one will be more welcome, whatever,' he added with emphasis, and a
+covert glance at Jonet, who had her feet on a flight of narrow stone
+steps leading up aloft. Presently she came down in surprise.
+
+'Why, mother, look you; there is a big room overhead. What do that be
+for?'
+
+Thomas flushed.
+
+''Deed, William said it was best make the house complete at first, and
+show what we could do. Until it be wanted it will serve to keep my best
+timber dry and safe.'
+
+'But you do not be noticing how solid and substantial are the walls.'
+This to Mrs. Edwards.
+
+'Yes, yes, sure I do! And I pray God to prosper the work of both your
+hands.'
+
+'Amen!' came with fervour from both young fellows, and had a loud echo
+from the peat-cutter in the rear.
+
+There were not lacking turned-up noses or sneering comments on the
+presumption of two untried beginners setting out so pretentiously; but
+to them the substantial building with its two floors was as a modern
+manufacturer's pattern-card, and brought commissions to one or both.
+
+And it frequently happened that the two were engaged to work together,
+certainly whenever Robert Jones had a chance to put in a word.
+
+Long before Thomas Williams had his house set in order, or its wooden
+fittings complete, the vicar paid him a visit of inspection, and with
+him a gentleman he addressed as Mr. Morris. And a very close inspection
+the latter made, sounding and measuring the walls and trying the cement.
+
+'Good workmanship--extremely good workmanship,' said he; 'but I expected
+no other from the boy. I shall recommend him.'
+
+His opinion or his recommendation must have been worth something, for,
+very shortly, William Edwards was called upon to erect another
+two-floored house of even larger dimensions, nearer to Caerphilly and to
+the farrier's shed where he had graduated in masonry.
+
+Previously to that, as they walked home, arm in arm together, after that
+Sunday view of the new workshop, Rhys had laid before him the latest
+impediment their mother had thrown in the way of his marriage. It was
+something new for him to take counsel with William.
+
+'Ah, well, Rhys,' assented he, 'mother do be something unreasonable. She
+do be worse than Laban, for you have been after Cate longer than Jacob's
+whole service, and you have been a dutiful son to wait so long. I will
+soon be making a room for you somewhere--sure I will.'
+
+Leaving Rhys at the foot of the hill, he turned back to help his mother
+up the steep ascent, she having walked to church.
+
+Finding her in the best of good humours, he advocated his brother's
+cause so successfully that, by the time they were at the top, he had her
+consent to build an additional room at the chimney-end of the house,
+agreeing that, if the room were ready, the marriage might take place at
+Hollantide, or earlier, if all the crops were harvested and housed.
+
+'Ready, and May still blossoming?' William laughed as he collected his
+materials, and cleared sufficient ground, it seemed such a small affair.
+But before he had his wall two feet high came the unexpected commission
+for a two-storeyed house, also required in a given time, and put a stop
+to his brotherly arrangement.
+
+It was a proud moment for the young builder, though Rhys looked blank,
+and all was not clear before himself.
+
+'Never mind, Rhys,' said he; 'your place shall be ready in time. I wish
+I was as sure of the money to carry on the other work. I mean to manage
+it, but I do not like to be asking mother for my money back again.
+Jones has offered to find the stone, and wait for payment, and Williams
+the woodwork; but there will be labourers' wages, and other things. I
+must think it out.'
+
+He had not occasion to waste much time on 'thinks.' Mother and brothers
+agreed that the bulk of his contributions to the general purse should be
+regarded as a reserve fund for his use, nothing doubting it would be
+mutually advantageous.
+
+So his new undertaking was planned out, begun, and carried to a
+successful issue, to the joint profit of himself and friends, and the
+satisfaction of his employer. Not, however, without one or two hitches,
+and a considerable expenditure of thought, for he was at once architect
+and builder; and surely never one so young and self-taught before. But I
+am telling fact and not fable.
+
+In those days, if people worked long hours, it was not at express speed.
+There was no 'scamping,' for durability was a desideratum.
+
+It was therefore late in September before William could spare time to
+add another stone to the wall at Brookside, and even then he had to lend
+a hand in the harvest-field.
+
+He had, however, passed his word to Rhys, and there was no fear that he
+would break it. His promise meant performance, by hook or by crook.
+
+Besides, it was no great matter, and very soon Thomas Williams had the
+joists and other woodwork ready on the ground, and was fitting in the
+framework of the doorway, for the young mason, mounted on a plank raised
+upon sods, was adjusting the crowning stones of the new gable with an
+aspect of self-content.
+
+It was close upon the dinner-hour, and Cate, as impatient as Rhys, had
+hurried to the front of the house along with Jonet to note progress, and
+clapped her hands in glee to find the masonry so near completion.
+
+At that juncture William cast his eyes downhill. A sharp 'Ugh!'
+indicative of annoyance burst from him. 'Here do be coming that wicked
+old Pryse,' he cried. 'What do he be wanting here?'
+
+The uphill road wound round to the farmyard in the rear. A stile
+admitted to the enclosure in front and a narrow gap farther away. Here,
+at the stile, he alighted from his horse, throwing the reins over the
+side-post.
+
+'Ah, sure,' said he, with the straight-lipped smile which he made so
+offensive, 'things must be prospering with you. It is well to have a
+builder in the family when the house is too small. Some one must be
+going to venture on a wife; or perhaps Mrs. Edwards has grown weary of
+her widowhood?'
+
+How evil was the look in those half-closed eyes of his, as William
+answered from his platform--
+
+'Rhys is going to be married, sir. Have you anything to say against
+that?'
+
+'Oh, dear, no. Rhys, indeed! Let me congratulate him on the auspicious
+prospect, and on the prosperity it indicates. His lordship will be
+delighted, I am sure, to hear of these additions to the farm and the
+family.' And as he spoke he rubbed one skinny hand over the other
+slowly--
+
+
+     'Washing his hands with invisible soap,
+       In imperceptible water'--
+
+
+with apparent satisfaction born of anything but goodwill.
+
+Rhys and Mrs. Edwards coming upon the scene, the same mock salutations
+were offered, the sneer being so palpable that Jonet involuntarily edged
+nearer to Thomas Williams, and Cate caught at the arm of Rhys as if for
+protection.
+
+For once he declined their proffered hospitality, contenting himself
+with a horn of cider. A mountain farmer's vegetarian meal was little to
+his liking, and he knew that meat was reserved for Sundays and rare
+festivals. Then mounting his horse he went trotting over the farm,
+reckoning up the value of crops stacked or standing, and of the sheep
+and cows pastured on the mountain-side, as if the produce had been his
+own, not the farmer's.
+
+His presence cast a temporary gloom over the family. He was regarded as
+a bird of ill-omen.
+
+But the cloud speedily dispersed, and the building went merrily on. By
+the beginning of October the rafters were on, and William had begun to
+thatch it in, and was considering the desirability of re-thatching the
+whole house, when their plans had a sudden check before Martinmas.
+
+William, mounted on a ladder, was taking a bundle of fresh straw from
+his young labourer, when a red-faced man, whom he seemed to remember
+unpleasantly, came boldly over the stile, took a folded paper from his
+greasy pocket, and demanded insolently to see 'Jane Edwards, the tenant
+at will.'
+
+He was the truculent official messenger of Mr. Pryse, and the paper he
+thrust into the widow's trembling hand was a formal 'notice of
+ejectment' from the farm!
+
+The skinny hand of Mr. Pryse had closed upon the family with a vice-like
+grip.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+WITH GRANDFATHER'S GOLD.
+
+
+Had the paper handed to Mrs. Edwards contained a burning fuse to set the
+whole homestead ablaze and lay it in ashes, it could scarcely have
+created greater consternation.
+
+The grin on the bearer's face and his mother's shriek of dismay brought
+William down from his ladder in haste, and sent the lad John Llwyd off
+at racing speed to carry the alarm of unknown calamity to the rest.
+
+One by one came Rhys, Davy, and Jonet rushing into the house, to find
+their mother, with her apron thrown over her head, rocking herself to
+and fro on the old grandfather's armchair, wringing her hands and
+moaning in the extremity of distress, that to them seemed inexplicable.
+
+'Oh that I should be living to see this day! Oh that things should ever
+be coming to this pass! Sure to goodness it will be the death of me!'
+
+William, by her side, was endeavouring to master the legal jargon of a
+document in his hands; while Ales, with arms and apron wet from the
+washtub, was bending over her mistress, and doing her rough best to
+check the outburst of grief after her own pithy fashion.
+
+'Name o' goodness, Jane Edwards, you do be taking on as if Mr. Pryse was
+God Almighty! Sure the battle's not lost before it do be fought. 'Deed,
+you couldn't fret worse if Rhys had been carried off like my Evan. Look
+to God, mistress; His breath can shrivel up Mr. Pryse like a leaf in an
+east wind.'
+
+But the shock was too new for immediate consolation. Philosophy is no
+plaister for a raw wound.
+
+Meanwhile William had tossed the 'notice' across the table to Rhys, with
+the remark, on which he set his strong, white teeth, 'The skinny old
+kite has whetted his beak, and do be thinking to tear us with his
+talons; but, if I don't be cutting his claws for him before the year
+runs out, my name's not William Edwards.'
+
+'The best way to do that would be to find the lease,' put in Davy. 'I
+wonder where grandfather did be hiding it?'
+
+'I'll find it out, if I pull the old house down, stone by stone,' cried
+William passionately; adding in another tone, 'Look you here, mother,
+crying will not be mending a broken egg. Let us show the old wretch a
+bold front, and who knows but God may help us to find the lease and keep
+the farm in spite of him. But, if not, in twelve months' time _I_ may be
+making a home for you, farm or no farm.'
+
+Rhys alone had not spoken. Jonet had crept up to her mother, and,
+kneeling by her side, whispered comforting words, whilst tears ran down
+her own cheeks.
+
+Rhys dashed the paper down on the floor and strode out, a suppressed cry
+of bitter anguish bursting from him. He could not ask Cate to marry now,
+with ruin hanging over them! He almost reeled against the doorway of the
+newly-erected addition, and groaned aloud. He felt as if the blow was
+directed against him--him above all.
+
+'I did be so happy,' he murmured, 'and now--Oh, Cate, dear Cate, how can
+I be breaking the terrible news to you!'
+
+Davy had followed Rhys.
+
+''Deed, I will be for telling Cate, if it will be saving you pain,' he
+suggested quietly. 'Perhaps she may be taking it best from me.'
+
+'Sure, Davy, you was always a good fellow,' was all the assent of Rhys.
+But without turning round he stretched out his broad brown hand to meet
+the warm clasp of Davy, who, in another minute, was on his way steadily
+downhill.
+
+Probably both brothers anticipated hot-tempered tantrums from Cate
+Griffiths at the sudden change of her matrimonial prospects. But for
+once it was the mother, and not the girl, who flew into a rage at what
+she regarded as the final defeat of long-laid schemes.
+
+For a moment Cate seemed dazed. 'Poor Rhys!' was all she said; 'he will
+need some one to comfort him, and your mother too.'
+
+Ten minutes later Rhys, leaning stupidly against the door-frame where
+Davy had left him, felt a pair of warm arms steal round his neck, and a
+loving voice say, 'Poor Rhys! What do it matter? There do be other farms
+to be had. We shall not lose each other if we do be waiting. You have
+got a lease _somewhere_ that shall upset old Pryse. And look you, Rhys,
+neither Pryse nor his lordship have leases of their lives. He may not
+live to turn you out. Do not be disheartened. Trust God, do your duty,
+and leave the rest to Him!'
+
+Poor Rhys! The very first words of sympathy had sunk into his soul. He
+had never known Cate so loving in all his life. She had been wayward,
+teasing, and tantalising, but never thus. His trial sank to nothing in
+the new discovery. He clasped her close, and took courage. Half his fear
+had been to lose her.
+
+A loud summons from Ales recalled Rhys to neglected duties, and
+barefooted Cate sped homewards to have a sharp-tongued contest with her
+mother, who renewed an old cry that 'Cate needn't be spoiling her market
+for Rhys Edwards, whatever.'
+
+The news spread rapidly that Mrs. Edwards had notice to quit the farm
+next Michaelmas, and commiseration was general.
+
+But when Jane Edwards, supported by Rhys and Owen Griffith, walked into
+Mr. Pryse's apartment at the inn on the 9th of October, Caerphilly Fair
+Day, neither she nor Rhys made any allusion to the notice received or
+looked in any way daunted.
+
+She put down her money, and asked for her receipt.
+
+The agent eyed her curiously, but in the face of two witnesses he
+required to guard his words.
+
+As Mrs. Edwards examined carefully the receipt he gave, he remarked,
+with his sinister smile--
+
+'His lordship requires you to pay due regard to the ejectment notice
+served upon you. He cannot permit _tenants at will_ to build on his land
+without express permission.'
+
+'_If_ his lordship do be knowing anything of that ejectment notice, he
+will know that it be just so much waste paper. Good-day, sir.'
+
+He opened his eyes wide for once, and stared at her, but without another
+word Mrs. Edwards left the room, followed by Rhys and Griffith, who had
+previously paid his rent.
+
+'You touched him there,' said they both in a breath, when clear of the
+inn.
+
+They would have been sure of it had they seen him start from his seat
+and grasp the arms of his chair, exclaiming, as he sank back again--
+
+'Confound the woman! What did she mean? Is the lease found? And what
+meant her innuendo anent his lordship's knowledge. They cannot
+have--but--no, no!' And there he sat biting his long nails in
+perplexity, oblivious of frequent knocks at the door, or tenants waiting
+in the passage for their turn.
+
+No, the lease had not been found, but something else had, from which
+Mrs. Edwards derived her courage.
+
+In the first outpouring of her indignation she had forbidden William to
+proceed with his thatching. But he was equally persistent.
+
+'What, mother!' he cried hotly, 'leave that bit of a place unroofed to
+be telling old Pryse that we be frightened by his dirty paper? Not I.
+And it's my belief his lordship does not know one word about it,
+whatever.'
+
+The words dropped from his lips like an inspiration. His mother caught
+at them.
+
+William, taking the bit between his teeth, was up his ladder, with John
+Llwyd in attendance, before she had fully mastered the probabilities of
+the case.
+
+It was not a long business, for considering the state of affairs he was
+not so foolhardy as to re-roof the whole farm. But to make a neat job of
+it he had to clear away the worn and jagged edges of the old thatch to
+make an even joining.
+
+As he did so, and created a gap, something fell down inside the kitchen
+with a thud and a rattle.
+
+'Name o' goodness, what's that?' cried Ales from the fireplace, almost
+losing her hold of the iron pot she was hanging on the hook. 'Do you be
+going to bring the house about our ears?'
+
+Another moment she sent up a scream, 'It's found! It's found! Thank
+God!'
+
+But before she could lay hands upon the prize William was in the house,
+and had picked up a small oak box covered with dust and mould.
+
+The scream of Ales brought Mrs. Edwards in from the farmyard with an
+apron full of eggs that fell with a smash to the floor.
+
+What mattered the eggs? The sight of that curious old box drove eggs out
+of mind!
+
+'Oh, goodness, Willem! That was your grandfather's box! Many a hunt your
+poor dear father did have for that box. Open it, quick!'
+
+'It's locked, mother. I cannot force the hasp, it do fit so tight.'
+
+'Ah, yes, I do forget. I do have kept the key all these years. Here,
+here, do make haste!'
+
+How her fingers trembled as she brought from her deep pocket the big key
+of the coffer, and the tiny one so well preserved for--this.
+
+A folded paper, and a multitude of coins!
+
+John Llwyd peeping in at the door, roughly driven off by Ales, like
+another winged-footed Mercury, flew over field and fallow, echoing her
+cry, 'It's found! It's found!'
+
+Before the paper could be read, or the coins counted, there were other
+echoes besides William's to the mother's pious 'Thanks be to God!'
+
+The paper was a _will_, duly signed and witnessed, by which William
+David Edwards bequeathed to his son William, and to his eldest son Rhys
+after him, the lease of the farm, and all property in the land held
+under that lease, with whatever stock and crops might be thereon at his
+decease. And further left whatever moneys might be found along with that
+will for the use of that son, William, should necessity arise, but laid
+a charge upon him not to diminish but to add to the store, to be divided
+between David and any future children born to the said William and Jane
+Edwards, in order to help them also to make a start in life.
+
+What a shout went up when the '_lease_' was named! It became no longer a
+disputed fact. Here was legal proof that might serve them in good stead
+if the lease itself could not be found. No doubt the careful
+grandfather--who had died suddenly in a fit--had secreted that as well
+as the will just come to light. That might turn up any day.
+
+Hope was in the ascendant. And now for the coins. Some--the five-pound
+and two-pound pieces of William and Mary--were unknown to the young men,
+though coined during the manhood of the hoarder; but the remainder,
+guineas and half-guineas from the mints alike of William and Queen Anne,
+had not yet dropped out of circulation, if seldom seen. Except four
+tarnished crown pieces, there was no silver.
+
+It was a golden inheritance to feast their eyes upon. In all one hundred
+and forty-five pounds. Such a store had never met their sight before.
+
+Yet, with the new possession came the dread of robbers. Ales counselled
+silence.
+
+''Deed, and it's best the teeth guard the tongue. It be a fool's trick
+to show the old fox the hen's nest. Him as could steal my Evan might lay
+his claws on your gold.'
+
+It was good advice, and wisely followed.
+
+John Llwyd had seen a paper unfolded, but no gold; so what he had to
+tell did not count for much to hearers unconcerned.
+
+But, coupled with the demeanour of Mrs. Edwards and her son, it put Mr.
+Pryse on the tenter-hooks of uncertainty.
+
+The thatching was completed, but no other little secret hiding-place was
+found, and discovery ended there.
+
+It was the season for the general repair of fences and dry walls, and
+William was kept busy.
+
+Winter was wearing away when, through his friend Thomas Williams,
+another stroke of good fortune came to him.
+
+Though I have called the latter a carpenter, the word must be taken in
+its broadest significance; he was also a joiner, and he aspired to be a
+millwright. In the days when he served his long apprenticeship, a man
+was expected to master his craft in all its details and branches, and to
+bring his mind to bear upon it, if he had one. He was older than his
+friend, and the very nature of his occupation had enlarged the circle
+under his observation.
+
+Unknown to any but William Edwards, his attic was stored with models of
+millwheels and machinery in various stages, at which he wrought when his
+workshop was closed.
+
+One morning, whilst February's snow yet lay upon the ground, a
+substantial miller named Owen Wynn, whose old mill threatened to topple
+over into the stream, stopped his horse at the carpenter's door, and
+asked abruptly 'if that was one of the buildings a young man named
+Edwards had put up.'
+
+Being answered in the affirmative, he asked permission to look over the
+place, adding--
+
+'Sure, I have heard he is the best mason that ever put stone together in
+these parts, and I would like to be seeing for myself, whatever.'
+
+Nothing loth, Thomas led the stranger over the whole premises (small, as
+_we_ should think), indicating the peculiar points of the builder's
+excellence.
+
+'Yes, yes,' said he, 'I observe,' and straightway marched up the attic
+stairs uninvited.
+
+The models arrested his attention. 'Hah, sure! you are a millwright, are
+you? Are those improvements?'
+
+Thomas Williams modestly 'thought they were.'
+
+'Then you and this Edwards could build a substantial mill between you?'
+
+'Without a doubt, whatever.'
+
+'Is the mason at hand?'
+
+''Deed, my apprentice do be gone for him.' The prescient young fellow
+had already scented business.
+
+Sturdy and self-reliant as William might be, and older than his years,
+yet there could be no mistaking eighteen for thirty.
+
+The miller started when he approached, his apron on, his hammer in his
+hand. He thought him extremely young to have obtained such repute.
+
+However, before they separated, the two had been commissioned to build
+his water-mill and house, and a time appointed to find a suitable spot.
+
+They were both conscious that it _was an undertaking_--with William a
+great one. They felt as if the making or marring of their lives was in
+their hands. But they were not daunted.
+
+'If difficulties arise we must surmount them,' said William resolutely,
+before his plans were drawn. 'As I cannot get books I can read, I must
+be studying the castle again.'
+
+There were no Welsh books of any technical value to him; English he was
+unable to read. Fortunately for him, the walls and towers and arches of
+Caerphilly Castle had been as the leaves of an open and intelligible
+book, a work on ancient masonry no printed volume could surpass.
+
+He had need to study it well now, to learn the secret of the arch, and
+how to construct a tunnel to bear away the watery overflow from the
+mill-wheel.
+
+Learn it the young mason did, and that effectually.
+
+Hard at work were they and their men all through the summer months, the
+builders with stone and wood, and ere the frosts of autumn came to lay a
+destructive finger on the mortar, there was a goodly mill by the side of
+the river, storey rising above storey, and the tunnelled waterway firm
+and compact, only some woodwork and the flagstone roof to be added.
+
+It had been a period of great anxiety to both young men, for besides the
+risks attending all experimental work, Edwards was uneasy respecting his
+mother's possession of the farm, and Thomas Williams had resolved to
+seek Jonet for a wife if their work was a success.
+
+Of any portion he might expect with her he knew nothing.
+
+The corn had ripened for the sickle, but no lease had yet been found.
+September shone upon the land, and the case became urgent.
+
+One evening, when the masons had laid by their tools for the night, the
+good vicar had a visitor. William Edwards desired to see the Rev. John
+Smith most particularly.
+
+[Illustration: HE FOUND MR. MORRIS SEATED AT THE TABLE AS WELL AS THE
+VICAR.--_See page 245._]
+
+To his surprise, when he was ushered into the low-ceiled parlour, he
+found Mr. Morris seated at the table as well as the vicar, evidently
+examining a number of geological specimens by the light of a couple of
+candles.
+
+William had met Mr. Morris several times of late chipping at rocks with
+a hammer, but did not expect to meet with him there, and could have
+dispensed with his presence.
+
+'Well, Edwards, what is your business?' asked the vicar after the first
+salutations. 'You need not hesitate to speak out; Mr. Morris is as much
+your friend as I am. What is it? Anything concerning the fine mill you
+are erecting?'
+
+'No, sir, it do be concerning the farm--and Mr. Pryse.'
+
+The gentlemen exchanged glances across the table. The change in
+William's frank voice and manner had not been lost on them.
+
+William laid his grandfather's will open before the vicar.
+
+'We did be finding that last autumn hid in a small box under the thatch,
+sir.'
+
+'You did not find the missing lease along with it, did you?'
+
+'No, sir. And we cannot be finding it, high or low. But you will see,
+sir, the lease be named here more than once.' And drawing closer to the
+vicar he pointed with his finger.
+
+'Yes, I perceive. Well, that certainly establishes the fact that you
+_had_ a lease.'
+
+'Sure, indeed, sir. But do you be thinking it would serve instead of the
+real lease to stop Mr. Pryse from turning us out of the farm?'
+questioned William, with a very anxious face.
+
+'Um--a--um--a--well, I am not so sure about that. We might get an
+opinion if there was a lawyer about, not under Pryse's finger and thumb.
+You must know, Morris,' said the vicar, turning to his friend, 'this
+young fellow's father gave mortal offence to Pryse by a blunt opinion
+that he was overreaching. He has owed the family a grudge ever since,
+and has done all in his power to oust the widow from her holding. You
+will remember the talk there was, six years ago, about the disappearance
+of a young man from Cardiff, who was supposed to have gone off in the
+mysterious _Osprey_ with money, not his own--some people said was
+"_carried_ off" perforce. Anyway, that was the farm-servant of Mrs.
+Edwards, who was about to be married--for I read out the banns--and he
+had with him both his own savings and the money to pay the widow's
+half-year's rent. He was seen to enter Mr. Pryse's office. He ordered
+and bought things to set up farming, and _paid_ for some. In three
+weeks' time Mr. Pryse made a seizure on the farm for unpaid rent,
+declaring the man a defaulter. Fortunately, Mrs. Edwards had the means
+to meet his demands. Since then he has twice raised the rent, insisting
+that the widow is only a tenant at will, and last Martinmas served her
+with a notice of ejectment to come in force this present month,
+insisting that no lease exists. It so happens that both the father and
+grandfather died too suddenly to make any disclosures or arrangements.
+Thus the lease is missing, and this will has only just come to light.
+Look it over, and say what you think.'
+
+'Take a seat, William. I did not observe that you were standing all this
+while,' he added.
+
+Mr. Morris shook his head as he folded up and returned the document. 'To
+any unprejudiced person this settles all doubt that a lease exists, and
+the duplicate must be in the possession of his lordship or his agent.
+But it does not specify the terms or the date of the lease, and _there_
+Mr. Pryse has the advantage. He may know of some clause you have
+infringed.'
+
+William sighed heavily. 'Then there will be no hope for us. It will
+break poor mother's heart, in truth it will. We don't believe his
+lordship knows a word. If I could but get to see him. But there, Mr.
+Pryse would stop that!' and he rose to depart.
+
+'Stay, stay!' cried Mr. Morris; 'maybe I can help you at this pinch.
+Find me pen, ink, and paper, Mr. Smith.'
+
+William looked on in bewilderment whilst the quill of Mr. Morris went
+squeaking across the paper, or he nibbled the feather end of the pen in
+a pause for thought, or for an answer to a question.
+
+After a time, which to William appeared hours, he threw the paper across
+the table to the vicar.
+
+'There,' said he, 'is a brief statement of the case, as detailed to me.
+If you find it correct, pray both of you affix your signatures. It shall
+be my care _that_ reaches his lordship's own hand, though he is now at
+Court, and time is short. If you leave the will in our good vicar's
+charge, I will make a fair copy and enclose it, along with some private
+intelligence of my own concerning Mr. Pryse. Good-night, young man. Tell
+your mother not to be downhearted.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+IN THE NICK OF TIME.
+
+
+'Name o' goodness, what be keeping Willem out so late?' said his mother,
+peering out into the night. 'I do hope he have not been stopping at the
+inn again, and him with that will in his pocket. He do be getting very
+unsteady since he has been having those big places to build.'
+
+''Deed, his sudden rise do be turning his head. He may have as sudden a
+fall one of these days,' was the commentary of Rhys.
+
+But when William came in half an hour later, as steady and sober as his
+brothers, and explained satisfactorily how he chanced to be so very
+late, there was nothing but the voice of gratitude to be heard. He had
+left the vicarage almost choked by his own inarticulate thanks.
+
+'It was quite providential that Mr. Morris did be staying at the
+vicarage,' said Mrs. Edwards. 'He do be a great man, sure, and kind.'
+
+'Yes, yes, and it was providential that _I_ went to consult the vicar,
+instead of Rhys. Mr. Morris would be knowing nothing of _him_,
+whatever,' added William, rather proudly.
+
+It was true that his uncommon success was making him somewhat
+self-sufficient. But so Rhys had been, with less reason.
+
+The weeks crept slowly on one after another.
+
+At the new mill, mason and millwright congratulated each other on
+hazardous difficulties overcome. The roof was on to the last flag. The
+arched tunnel was strong and firm. The machinery worked well, and the
+wheel went merrily round. When the painters cleared away their paint
+pots, they could hand the key to the miller in triumph.
+
+At the farm, hope had given way to doubt, and doubt was sinking into
+despair. The prayer of faith was timid and wavering. Only another day
+remained before the dreaded 9th of October, and as yet nothing had been
+heard either from Mr. Morris or the vicar, or from his lordship.
+Impending evil took the gloss off William's satisfaction.
+
+The morning of Tuesday the 8th broke dull, dreary, and depressing, with
+a heavy mist on the mountain and in the valley, which, towards eight
+o'clock, resolved itself into a drizzling rain, that made the cattle
+hang their heads and the sheep huddle together for mutual comfort.
+
+In view of contingencies, the farm stock had been reduced by sale below
+ordinary limits, and well-disposed neighbours had offered temporary
+houseroom and shelter amongst them for both family and anything movable.
+Thomas Williams cleared out his large attic for their accommodation, and
+Robert Jones promised to keep his team in readiness to remove household
+goods or newly-gathered crops at a moment's notice.
+
+Nothing was being done on the farm but what common care for the living,
+biped and quadruped, rendered necessary. But a general ransack of house
+and barns was going on for the discovery of the missing lease, and
+everything was topsy-turvy. Never had the storeroom had such a turn-out
+for years. Red-eyed Jonet and Cate ripped open beds and pillows, turned
+over sacks, dived among fleeces. For the twentieth time Mrs. Edwards
+emptied the great oak chest, and turned over the leaves of the large old
+Bible, her face grey and set like a rock.
+
+Ales alone bore a cheerful countenance, and baked the week's bread as in
+the ordinary course.
+
+'Look you, Jane Edwards,' she said, 'it's no use fretting and fuming.
+What God wills we must bear. But there's no need to be putting the
+burden on one's own back before He bids one take it up.'
+
+Mrs. Edwards sighed heavily. 'Ah, yes, Ales, true it is; but a good
+servant need never seek good service. We may seek far for a good farm.'
+
+'You don't be turned off this yet. And it's my firm belief you will be
+keeping the farm in spite of old Pryse. God's finger is stronger than
+man's arm. You wait and be patient. I've not been dreaming of Evan night
+after night for nothing. He seems to say, "I'm coming, I'm coming;" and
+I feel as if God was bringing him back, look you. I do!'
+
+'Ah, poor, foolish Ales! your longings do create your dreams. Evan be as
+far to seek as our lease.'
+
+'May be so, and may be not. I do be feeling as if he was as near and as
+warm almost as the loaf just baked, look you. And I feel, I feel'--
+
+'You do _look_ half out of your mind, Ales,' said Mrs. Edwards, in grave
+rebuke, rising from her hopeless quest and locking the coffer again.
+'This be no time to talk of foolish dreams.'
+
+'Mother,' called Jonet from the bedroom they were searching, 'there be a
+strange man with a bundle on a stick coming over the stile, and he's
+dripping wet.'
+
+Ales screamed, darted out by the open door, and before Mrs. Edwards
+could follow she was clasped in the arms of a rough-looking fellow, and
+crying out, 'I knew, I knew! Thank God!' In another moment she was
+sobbing and laughing hysterically on his breast in the reaction of her
+strange excitement.
+
+'Name o' goodness, that never do be you, Evan?' burst from Mrs. Edwards
+in unmitigated amazement.
+
+[Illustration: LONG-LOST EVAN HAD COME BACK.--_See page 252._]
+
+'Ay, ay, it's me for certain,' was answered cheerily, as the sturdy,
+unshaved man brushed past her, carrying his limp sweetheart into the
+kitchen and grandfather's stiff-backed chair, heedless of the wet trail
+he left upon the floor.
+
+Picture the excitement. Strong-minded Ales in hysterics! Jonet and Cate
+rushing about wildly, and shouting out that long-lost Evan had come
+back! William and Rhys hurrying in, astonished and delighted, followed
+by Davy, for once in a hurry; and Evan, loth to release Ales, puzzled
+to find hands for them all to shake at once, and equally puzzled how to
+compose Ales, who is sobbing and laughing by turns.
+
+Housewifely instinct, or a peculiar fume in her nostrils, acts as a
+restorative. 'The bread's burning,' she gasps and Cate presses forward
+to the rescue of the scorching loaves, forgotten in the confusion and
+excitement.
+
+Then follows a string of questions, huddled one upon another, but before
+any one can be answered, Mrs. Edwards says dolefully, 'Ah, Evan, we be
+thankful to see you back, but you have come on a sad day for all that.'
+
+'Have I? Then, 'deed, it had nearly been a sadder for in coming across
+the ford, I either mistook my depth, or the water is rising, for it came
+up to my waistband, and nearly carried me off my feet. But I'm not to be
+drowned, that's clear, till I've settled with that old rogue Pryse,' he
+says, with an emphasis and a look that are in themselves anathemas.
+
+'Ah, I told you so,' cries Ales. 'Woe to the man that makes a hundred
+sad!' but in the midst of an affirmative chorus comes an interruption in
+the shape of the old brown house-dog, wagging his tail and dropping a
+big bundle wrapped in sailcloth at the feet of Evan, then jumping up to
+ask for recognition and thanks.
+
+It is then seen that Evan is standing in a pool of water, whereupon Mrs.
+Edwards orders him off to change his wet clothes for the dry ones in his
+bundle, whilst she and the other women bestir themselves to set the
+dinner on the table, Ales making all sorts of blunders in the process.
+
+It is by no means a common dinner on a Welsh farm table at that period,
+although it only comprises pork, potatoes, and greens, boiled in the
+same pot with the dough dumplings. Mrs. Edwards marks it out reverently
+as they take their seats.
+
+'Let us be thanking Almighty God that the good food provided for our
+last dinner under this roof should have become, by His blessing, a
+thanksgiving feast; for the one supposed dead do be alive again, the one
+lost do be found.'
+
+The general 'Amen' was peculiarly solemn, and it occurred to Evan that
+for a thanksgiving there was more of sorrow than gladness.
+
+Then the first greeting of Mrs. Edwards recurred to him, coupled with
+the remark about a 'last dinner'; and though the savour was appetising,
+and his fast had been long, he could not have touched a morsel until his
+doubts were resolved. He put his question, and was speedily answered by
+more than one voice--
+
+'Oh, Evan, we cannot find our lease, and Mr. Pryse be going to drive us
+off the farm to-morrow.'
+
+It was his turn to look solemn. ''Deed, and that do be bad. You do have
+a lease, sure to goodness?'
+
+'Oh yes. Willem found grandfather's will, and the lease do be left to
+Rhys; but no lease can we be finding anywhere.'
+
+'Where have you been looking?'
+
+All sorts of likely and unlikely places were named.
+
+'My first master kept his lease in the Bible. Did you look there?'
+
+'Indeed, yes, Evan,' came from Mrs. Edwards, with a disheartened sigh;
+'I turned over every leaf.'
+
+'Oh, I do mean under the old cloth cover. He kept his there.'
+
+A moment of breathless astonishment--a general rise from the table!
+
+Mrs. Edwards was down on her knees unlocking the coffer.
+
+In another minute the Bible was out; the stout cloth cover ripped off.
+There lay the parchment, flat and clean, as when laid there years upon
+years before by hands now in the clasp of death.
+
+'_Thank God!_' cried Mrs. Edwards, still upon her knees. 'My children,
+the finger of God is in this. Our search did be vain till He did send
+His own messenger to point it out. As Ales did say, God's finger _is_
+stronger than man's arm; strong to save. Let us once more thank Him.'
+
+The relief had been overpowering. The thanksgiving was strong and deep.
+The reaction was too great almost for speech. The dinner, nearly cold,
+was eaten in silence; but it was the silence of hopefulness, not
+despair.
+
+It was followed by a clattering and chattering of loosened tongues,
+guesses at Mr. Pryse's consternation on the morrow, and questionings of
+Evan's disappearance and adventures, which we may leave that morrow to
+answer.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mean though he was through every fibre of his being, Mr. Pryse was
+lavish in regard to his own creature comforts. Yet even many of these
+he contrived to obtain gratuitously from tenants who loved him little
+and feared him much, or from obsequious sea-captains whose cargo was not
+altogether coal or iron, captains who had goods to bring ashore without
+compliments to Custom House officers. And those were anything but days
+of free trade.
+
+He sat at ease between a cosy fire, which cost him nothing, and a round
+breakfast-table on which were the remains of chicken, ham, and eggs, all
+of which were equally cheap. A fragrant aroma of Mocha coffee yet
+lingered around the foreign china cup and saucer and coffee-pot, none of
+which had paid duty to England's monarch, any more than the Barcelona
+silk handkerchief cast lightly over the knee he was indolently nursing
+on the other, whilst he leaned back in his tall chair picking his teeth,
+and a smile of uttermost self-content and enjoyment creased the
+parchment-like skin into folds under his wicked old eyes.
+
+'Yes,' said he, half aloud to himself; 'out they go to-morrow, stock and
+lot! And let them get another farm where they can. Lease, indeed'--and
+he chuckled. 'If they could find any lease to show, there would have
+been no sending of cows and sheep and grain to market. Ah, yes, I shall
+soon pay off my old score to that fellow who drowned himself like a
+fool. Yes, and get a higher rent, now that building son of his has
+enlarged the homestead.'
+
+The chuckle had not died out of his skinny throat when the door opened,
+and he caught his breath, for a special messenger from his lordship,
+booted and spurred, like one who rides in haste, entered unannounced,
+and with the simple remark that he 'had rather a rough passage across
+the Severn from Bristol that morning, and found the air raw and cold,'
+presented a sealed packet, marked 'Immediate and important.'
+
+Had he said he crossed in a Revenue cutter, Mr. Pryse might not so
+readily have taken the hint thrown out.
+
+As it was, he apologised for the coldness of the breakfast, and from a
+private cabinet produced a bottle of genuine Hollands--which had never
+gone through a Custom House--and, setting them before his unexpected
+visitor, invited him to help himself.
+
+'I trust his lordship is well?' he said blandly, but quite as a matter
+of course.
+
+'No; he was dangerously ill when I left,' came from the courier, with
+startling bluntness.
+
+What? His easy-going master ill! perhaps dying! Mr. Pryse turned ashen
+grey. 'You don't say so!' he ejaculated with a gasp, his fingers
+trembling, as he at last unfolded the despatch and began to read, hardly
+conscious that the man, smacking his lips over the fiery Hollands, had
+been watching him all along with keen, observant eyes.
+
+With all Mr. Pryse's self-command the paper rattled in his fingers as he
+read. It was not a lengthy epistle, and only the signature was his
+lordship's; the letter was from his son and heir. Its sole purport was
+to prevent injustice, as the act of a dying man.
+
+In stern and peremptory words it forbade Simon Pryse to harass or
+disturb the Widow Edwards in her holding, since he must know it was
+leased for three lives, and would not fall in until the demise of
+William Edwards' eldest son, then living. Moreover, he was commanded to
+refund, from his own purse, all excess rent he had extorted from the
+widow, _yet not included in his accounts_. And he was required to
+furnish a true and just statement of all the moneys in his hands and all
+his dealings and transactions in his lordship's name, not omitting the
+share he was said to have taken in the abduction of one Evan Evans,
+seven years prior to that date.
+
+'It shall be done,' said Mr. Pryse hoarsely, as the messenger rose to
+depart, fully satisfied with the result of his observations.
+
+'Yes, it _shall_ be done!' cried the infuriated agent, when the man was
+gone, springing to his feet with a tremendous oath. 'But not as his
+lordship or his lordship's heir proposes. Shall I forego the revenge I
+have nursed for years, when a few hours will bring the hated tribe
+within my grip? No; I will set my feet upon their necks if I die for
+it!' and another fierce anathema parted those thin lips of his.
+
+All on a sudden he stopped short, and bit his long nails viciously. 'Has
+some one turned traitor?' he murmured between set teeth. 'Those poor
+farming idiots could not get a letter to his lordship's hand. No matter.
+The bolt has fallen sooner than I expected, but trust me to be taken
+unprepared. It has fallen in the nick of time. In another hour the
+_Cambria_ would have sailed.'
+
+Upstairs, three steps at a time like a boy, he ran, exulting in his own
+crafty schemes for outwitting justice; drew his blue and white check
+curtain quite across his bedroom window--a preconcerted signal to the
+_Cambria's_ skipper--changed his kerseymere smalls for his leather
+riding breeches, and was downstairs in his private office as usual, yet
+not as usual. He was on his knees before his strong box and his golden
+god.
+
+In his guilty knowledge and his craftiness, he had years before prepared
+for flight on emergency. He had lodged a portion of his filchings in
+Wood's Gloucester Bank, under a fictitious name. Yet as there was no
+other provincial bank at that time in all England and Wales, and no bank
+notes under £20 value, exchange was not easy. Rents, etc., were paid in
+specie. Specie also was transmitted to his lordship under strict guard.
+Whenever an opportunity occurred, the agent converted coin into notes,
+and packed them in the waistband of his leather breeches. Still, coin
+had accumulated in his strong box, always packed close, and secured with
+triple locks, ready for removal on short notice, though its weight
+belied its bulk.
+
+The signal brought the skipper. There was already a tacit understanding
+between the worthy pair, and their conference was brief. Arrangements
+were made for the _Cambria_ to drop down the river with the evening
+tide, and lay to outside in the bay. Fain would the skipper have Mr.
+Pryse go aboard with his strong box, and make all sail at once.
+
+No, no; he was not willing to forego his revenge or the prospect of
+adding a succession of rents to his ill-gotten gains; so a four-oared
+boat was to meet him at Taff's Well landing-place up the river on the
+morrow, and await his coming--ay, even until midnight.
+
+His impish friends, Avarice and Malice, were more potent advisers than
+the wary skipper; so, with a shrug of the shoulders, he withdrew, and
+obeyed.
+
+'That's a heavy load you've got, messmates,' called a sailor to the two
+others conveying to the schooner the strong box, covered with tarpaulin,
+as if to protect it from the rain. But they merely answered, 'Ay, ay,'
+and declined assistance.
+
+The afternoon was then far spent, but two horses stood at the door, and
+in a few minutes Mr. Pryse, booted and spurred, and cased in a long
+riding-coat, was in the saddle, the flaps of his three-cornered hat let
+down, as was commonly the case in wet weather, so as to convert it into
+a broad-brimmed slouch, a pair of saddle-bags slung before him, likewise
+holsters, fitted with pistols, carefully loaded.
+
+He trotted away from the door he was never to see again, with a lie on
+his lips to his housekeeper, and, followed by his less
+elaborately-accoutred attendant, took the new Merthyr Tydvil Road, which
+not only ran parallel with the river in a direct line wherever
+practicable, but avoided the long detour by Caerphilly, where no rents
+would be paid until the Martinmas Fair.
+
+He had rents, and more than rents, to collect as he stopped at wayside
+houses, or so-called inns, off and on the direct road, and was not to be
+denied, though a day before due. So he managed to pocket some heavy cash
+before, at a late hour, he stopped for the night under the shadow of
+cliff-seated Castel Coch, to dry his drenched overcoat, eat a hearty
+supper, and retire to _rest_, leaving orders that he was to be in the
+saddle by daybreak in the morning.
+
+He was in a desperate hurry to transact his pleasant bit of business
+with Mrs. Edwards, but could not forbear grasping at all the coin he
+could by the way, never thinking that the overreaching hand is apt to
+grasp at shadows.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+THE FINGER OF GOD.
+
+
+The heavy rain had ceased in the night. The sky was clear, the eaves and
+trees had forgotten to drip, the mist was lifting from the mountain-top
+and from the surcharged river, when, after a succession of profitable
+calls, between nine and ten o'clock in the morning, master and man rode
+up the rugged ascent to Brookside Farm, and, dismounting, the former
+walked into the house with insolent assumption, and, finding only Mrs.
+Edwards there, demanded rudely--
+
+'Is the half-year's rent ready?' Of course, that was his first care.
+
+'There do be no rent owing, sir.'
+
+'What do you mean, woman?'
+
+'I mean that you have been paid, and overpaid, and I do not be going to
+pay you one brass farthing.'
+
+He grew livid, set his teeth, and looked as if he would have struck her
+to the ground.
+
+'We'll see about that. You had due notice to quit. You have stayed on
+the farm in defiance of the law, and now, by'--(and he swore a great
+oath)--'you shall turn out without stick or stock. Morgan,' over his
+shoulder to the man, 'call up the other men. We will soon see who is
+master here. I seize in his lordship's name.'
+
+'And _I_ forbid in his lordship's name,' said Mr. Morris, whose shadow
+in the doorway had been mistaken for the man Morgan's.
+
+Mr. Pryse recoiled. Mr. Morris was no stranger to him; and no friend of
+his, he well knew. What brought him there, or the vicar, close at his
+heels?
+
+'By what right do _you_ presume to interfere?' he asked boldly.
+
+'By _this_, sir,' unfolding a letter. 'I presume you know his lordship's
+hand and seal. _You_ were not the only one for whom the courier had a
+despatch yesterday.'
+
+Mr. Pryse seemed to shrink within his clothes. A greenish hue overspread
+the yellow of his skin. A clammy dew burst out upon his forehead. Had he
+spurned the skipper's sage advice only to come here for this? It was
+maddening to think of.
+
+He attempted to brazen it out, as a last resource.
+
+'I am acting in his lordship's interest, sir. He has been shamelessly
+misinformed. These people have not paid more than a fair rental. And
+they never had a lease.'
+
+'What do you be calling _that_, sir?' And Rhys pressing to the front,
+held up the lease--at a safe distance, for Mr. Pryse appeared ready to
+spring upon it like a wild cat.
+
+'And now, sir,' said Mr. Morris sternly, 'you will have to disgorge.
+Those are his lordship's orders. You see we hold a quittance for half a
+year's rent. Evan, bring forward the receipt.'
+
+Had a ghost risen from the grave to confront him, Mr. Pryse could not
+have looked more aghast or terror-stricken, when Evan stepped from
+behind into the light, with the faded receipt in his hand.
+
+Baffled, defeated, confronted, as it were, by the dead.
+
+Mr. Pryse shrieked aloud, fell on his knees, covering his eyes with his
+quivering hands.
+
+'You here?--_you?_ I fancied you had gone down with the _Osprey_.'
+
+'You hear him, gentlemen? You hear him? He do be owning his share in
+kidnapping me! No, you smuggling old rogue, when the _Osprey_ went all
+to pieces on the rocks at the Land's End with its drunken crew and
+cargo--I, yes indeed _I_, gentlemen, who had been dragged on board bound
+like a thief--I did be the only one saved. I had been sent up aloft to
+punish me because I would not join the wicked crew, and when the mast
+did go overboard, I held on for my very life. I did be picked up the
+next day by an outward-bound East Indiaman, when there was little life
+left in me. But I wasn't to be drowned till I'd settled scores with this
+old villain here, that did send me adrift with rogues like himself, and
+to rob the widow blackened my honest name.
+
+'No, Mr. Pryse, though I've been sailing the seas all these sorrowful
+years in one craft or other, cuffed, kicked, half-starved, used worse
+than a dog, and never able to make my way back to my sweetheart or
+home, if it had not been for another shipwreck I'd never have been here
+now. A Liverpool trader took me and two shipmates off a raft in the
+middle of the ocean, when we was half-mad with hunger and thirst, and
+the good captain, God bless him, sent me on shore at Fishguard, to make
+my way home to my sweetheart as quick as I could. And I didn't have to
+beg my way, for I had got money hid under my belt. And I do be thanking
+God sirs, for bringing me here in time to confound this wicked old
+shivering coward. I do be feeling as if I could shake every bone out of
+his ugly skin, but Ales bids me leave him to God and his master.'
+
+''Deed, he deserves kicking from the top of the hill to the bottom,'
+thrust in fiery William.
+
+Not a word had the detected steward spoken, but his features and his
+lean fingers worked vindictively, as if longing to grasp the speakers'
+throats.
+
+All at once he shrieked out--
+
+'That receipt's a forgery, a vile forgery. Look at it, gentlemen. That
+paper has never been in salt water. Ugh! How could a common sailor keep
+a bit of paper unworn and dry for six years, and through two shipwrecks?
+It is absurd.'
+
+Gaining courage from his own sneering suggestion, Mr. Pryse rose to his
+feet, little expecting the answer which came from William.
+
+''Deed, no, sirs. Neither our receipt, nor Owen Griffith's here, nor
+Evan's own money ever went nearer the sea than old Breint's saddle. He
+had made a private pocket under the lining, and there they did be
+waiting for him, yes, sure.'
+
+'It's well they did, for those thieves on the _Osprey_ did be stripping
+me of all I had,' put in Evan.
+
+And now, Mr. Morris declaring the receipts genuine, insisted on Mr.
+Pryse there and then refunding the extra rent extorted year by year from
+Mrs. Edwards, giving a quittance up to date on account of the receipt.
+
+But Mr. Pryse had recovered courage--and craft. He began to bluster.
+Refused to acknowledge the authority of either Mr. Morris or the vicar.
+He was answerable to his lordship. To him only would he render an
+account. He would bid them good-morning.
+
+'Well, sir,' said Mr. Morris, 'I cannot enforce his lordship's commands
+without legal warrant. But had I known all I have heard since I came
+hither, I should have come provided with a warrant for your arrest, Mr.
+Pryse. And I warn you the reckoning will come sooner than you expect.'
+
+Much sooner!
+
+He walked out of the farmhouse with head erect and defiant, as if he had
+won a victory. He bade Morgan pay his myrmidons and follow; then rode
+down hill baffled, but not wholly defeated. He had not disgorged a
+penny, had added other rents as he came along to the hoard he was
+carrying away. Warrant, indeed! He would soon be beyond reach of
+warrants!
+
+'Nay,' he shouted back with a snarl, 'threatened men live long;' but
+before he reached the level, some sense of ungratified revenge must have
+stung him, for he put spurs to his horse, and dashed on, splashing
+through the swollen brook, and turning the corner to the ford--not the
+high-road--as if pursued by a troop of demons.
+
+Blinded by his own evil passions, exulting in his escape, yet alarmed by
+the sound of hoofs behind him, he spurred his horse to the uncertain
+ford in the same hot haste, seeing nothing but his own need to cross.
+
+[Illustration: BLINDED BY PASSION, HE SPURRED HIS HORSE TO THE UNCERTAIN
+FORD.--_See page 271._]
+
+His follower heard a shriek, but reached the river's brink only in time
+to see a swirling mass of something far down the rain-filled river.
+
+Mr. Pryse had gone to meet the _Cambria's_ boat in other fashion than he
+contemplated.
+
+His spurs entangled in the stirrups, his pockets and saddle-bags
+weighted with ill-gotten coin, horse and man had gone together.
+
+A Welshman in a coracle[13] called out to the ferryman at Taff's Well
+Ferry, and he to the _Cambria's_ men rowing up-stream, and amongst them
+they got a panting, struggling, half-dead horse ashore, to find what
+_had_ been Mr. Pryse _underneath_, clutching at the turned saddle and
+bags with the grip that never relaxes--the grip of death.
+
+Cover him over. Let the Preventive-service men, chasing the other boat,
+fight with pistol and cutlass for the possession of the dead, his gold,
+and his incriminating papers, whilst the smart Preventive cutter in the
+bay boards the short-handed _Cambria_, and tows her confiscated prize
+into port, the dead man's strong box included. Little recks the drowned
+man what becomes of his hoard. He has gone to his final reckoning with a
+Lord he had forgotten, a Lord no man can cheat or deceive.
+
+Intelligence of his retributive death comes to the rejoicing family at
+the farm with a sobering shock, but nobody affects to lament. And all
+over his lordship's wide domain, oppressed men breathe freer for this
+one man's death.
+
+'Man deliberates, but God delivers,' is said with bated breath by more
+than sententious Ales, whilst Mrs. Edwards insists that his death is a
+judgment for his strictures on her lost husband.
+
+And whilst the unhonoured remains of the fraudulent agent are committed
+to the earth, in Cardiff, with no mourner but his housekeeper, the vicar
+of Eglwysilan reads out the banns once more for Evan and Ales, and for
+Rhys Edwards and Cate Griffiths also.
+
+Great is the bustle of preparation. There is money in possession and
+hope in the future.
+
+There is no need to ask for contributions at the 'bidding,' though the
+invited guests are many.
+
+The new room William built is being fitted up with somewhat more regard
+to health and decency than has been common hitherto. Cate is bringing to
+her bridegroom more than had been looked for--dowlas sheets and
+blankets, spun and woven under their own cottage roof, and a good flock
+bed and pillows from the same source. Then she had not been idle, and if
+under-_linen_ was not worn in those days in that humid climate, she had
+a fair supply of flannel, and of linsey-woolsey for gowns and aprons,
+all of her own spinning. Ay, and she had stockings knitted ready to
+assume with her new dignity.
+
+The cottage at Castella has long been occupied by other tenants. Mr.
+Morris offers Evan a small farm between Caerphilly and Cardiff, on very
+easy terms. The goods he had bought and paid for have been sold, but
+fresh are furnished readily; and Robert Jones generously conveys the
+long-hoarded household goods of Ales to her new home, without fee or
+guerdon, and, with them, a winter store of peat and culm as a wedding
+gift.
+
+Both at Owen's cottage and the farm the women are busy as bees, baking
+and boiling for the wedding feast, for which Thomas Williams sets up
+long plank tables in the meadow that slopes to the foot of the hill, the
+break-neck ascent to the farm being a consideration on such an occasion.
+
+For the brides are supposed unwilling to be wed, or their friends to
+part with them, and there is racing and chasing to recover the runaway
+brides, and mock contests to obtain possession of them, in which the
+mountain ponies play their parts well. Then, the brides being captured,
+there is the headlong race to the church, which bodes ill to any unwary
+pedestrian they may meet. It is a remnant of old barbaric custom not to
+be dispensed with, and all the youths and maidens, far and wide, join in
+the race. Scarcely less noisy is the return, when the ceremony is over,
+and each bride is mounted behind her husband, Rhys and Cate taking the
+precedence.
+
+Be sure they bring appetites to the feast, where huge joints of boiled
+beef are matched by piles of smoking potatoes and turnips, the
+brown-jacketed esculents being as yet dainties to the multitude. Then
+there are great pitchers of _cwrw da_ and buttermilk for thirsty
+throats. And if there be a deficiency of glass and cutlery, according to
+our notions, all is as it should be to the feasters, who are to the
+manner born, and not fastidious, and who fling their contributions to
+the feast into the earthen bowls with right goodwill.
+
+Something much more important gave grace to the festive occasion, and
+that was the presence of a Welsh harper, one of the decaying race of
+bards, who sang them songs of Arthur and Llewellyn, and twanged his harp
+for lively dances on the greensward when the boards were cleared, and
+might be held accountable for more than one match decided that day.
+Certainly Thomas Williams obtained Jonet's shy promise to marry him in
+the spring if her mother would consent; and even Davy struck up an
+acquaintance with the niece of Robert Jones, that was likely to lead to
+something more in the end.
+
+It was quite an exceptional gathering, for not a drop of rain fell the
+whole day to mar the entertainment, and, short though it was, a good
+round frosty moon offered its shining lamp to light the middle-aged
+couple and their escort to their new home beyond Caerphilly, and to make
+even the crossing of the Taff safe to the contingent from the mountains
+beyond. All had 'gone merry as a marriage bell.'
+
+And here my story might be supposed to end; but for my hero--and I count
+William Edwards a hero--a new era was about to dawn.
+
+I have indicated that mines of coal and iron were being worked in
+Glamorganshire, but that the want of roads and bridges for conveyance
+and communication retarded the development of its untold mineral
+resources. Then, the hard nature of the coal already dug unfitted it,
+except as culm, for household use or smelting purposes in such furnaces
+as existed, where the fuel was principally charcoal.
+
+But about this time experiments were being made to test its utility, and
+Mr. John Morris, who for years had gone geologising among the mountains,
+was one of the first to suggest its feasibility. He had made experiments
+on a small scale, but Mr. Pryse had thrown impediments in the way of
+smelting on a larger basis in the neighbourhood of Cardiff, where the
+river and the sea were close for conveyance if his scheme succeeded.
+
+'It was too near the Castle. His lordship would have no reeking furnaces
+so close to his residence. There was no land for sale,' etc. etc.
+
+Mr. Morris was not to be put down by Mr. Pryse. He had applied, not to
+the old Viscount, but to his son and heir, who was not hoodwinked by Mr.
+Pryse, and cordially seconded the proposal. The old Viscount was even
+then on his deathbed. The succession of the new one, shortly after Mr.
+Pryse was committed to his narrow cell, left Mr. Morris free to act.
+
+The day before the double wedding he explained his views to William
+Edwards, and made to him a proposition.
+
+So it happened that, whilst Rhys and the rest were making merry, William
+was half the time lost in thought, and one or other rallied him on his
+unsociability, as they considered it.
+
+_He_ was simply considering his ability to undertake the erection of the
+smelting furnaces John Morris had in view. He had not much doubt of his
+own power to accomplish anything any other man could do, or had done, if
+the opportunity to study what had been previously done was afforded him.
+But here something was required differing from aught that had gone
+before, or with which he was acquainted.
+
+Mr. Morris had given him time for mature deliberation. He had great
+faith in the capacity of the self-taught genius, and still more in his
+indomitable determination to overcome difficulties.
+
+Yet books he had none that would afford the information he needed. He
+had done what he could to supply the defects of his education, thanks to
+the vicar. But he was still 'Cymro uniaith,' a Welshman of one language;
+and, though the literature of Wales certainly dates back to the twelfth
+century, and is said to date back to the sixth, its ancient legends,
+ballads, and poems would not instruct him how to build furnaces which
+should convert the hard Welsh coal into the smelter's slave.
+
+If there were English books on the subject, he was ignorant, and could
+not have read them had such been laid before him.
+
+He was not given to waste his time in unprofitable regrets.
+
+Before any one else was astir he was on the road northward to Merthyr
+Tydvil, bent on examining the process of iron-smelting as there carried
+on. The name of John Morris procured him ready admission to the works.
+But, although they had been in existence for a couple of centuries, and
+the ancient forests had been denuded of their giant oaks to supply their
+furnaces, they had as yet no furnace that would fuse the ore with coal
+alone, and the oak trees were growing scarce.
+
+William came away shaking his head, and muttering as he strode along:
+'Sure, if those be their smelting furnaces, there do be one as good at
+the Castle. They do be wanting a stronger blast if they employ coal. It
+will be a job to construct furnaces that will burn the stone-coal Mr.
+Morris be saying gives such great heat with neither flame nor smoke. But
+I'm bound to have a try what I can be doing. Sure, I'm not willing to
+give in without a try, look you!'
+
+And in this frame of mind he returned home to make calculations and
+sketches, and to think out the matter, walking to and fro in front of
+the house, with his head bent down and his hands behind him.
+
+'Idling,' his mother called it. Rhys had grown wiser.
+
+''Deed, mother, Willem do be having his "thinks." Best be leaving him
+alone.'
+
+'But he do not even be knitting, look you!'
+
+'Never mind, mother _fach_; he do be "studdying," as he do call it. We
+work with our hands; Willem do work with his head--yes, yes.'
+
+The following day he was away again, much to his mother's discomfort, as
+his silent and wandering mood had always been.
+
+If she had followed, she might have tracked him to his old storehouse of
+knowledge, Caerphilly Castle, and far down a crumbling flight of stone
+steps to a curious vault below the level of the moat, and, beneath that
+marvel of marvels, the reft, overhanging tower.
+
+He had gathered, by inquiry from the vicar and others, that here had
+anciently been a furnace for the smelting of metals for coinage and
+other purposes; and that it was supposed to have been employed, during a
+siege, for melting lead to pour from the battlements upon the besiegers;
+and, further, that either the besiegers or some traitor within contrived
+to let in a jet of water from the moat upon the molten metal, causing
+the terrific explosion which rent the tower from top to bottom, and left
+the strongly-built half hanging eleven feet out of the perpendicular, as
+a testimony to future ages.
+
+But it was not of battles or sieges William was thinking, unless it
+might be his own conflict with a difficulty. He was there to examine the
+ancient furnace, with no one to talk or interrupt, and to found his own
+theories thereupon.
+
+In a very short time Mr. Morris had his answer.
+
+'Yes, sir, I think I can undertake your work.'
+
+It was a bold undertaking for a farmer's son, self-taught, and only
+twenty years of age.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[13] An oval wicker boat covered with hide, with only a single seat, as
+used by the ancient Britons, and by the Welsh far into the present
+century.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+A BLIND INSTRUCTOR.
+
+
+Mrs. Edwards did not readily reconcile herself to the loss of her
+faithful serving-maid Ales. Still less readily to the substitution of
+Cate, for, now that she was the wife of Rhys, she took another footing
+on the floor than when she was Cate Griffith, and she allowed no one to
+forget that the farm was left to Rhys by his grandfather's will, and,
+therefore, he was master, the implication being that she was mistress.
+
+Hitherto Mrs. Edwards had been head and front of everything. As she had
+told Mr. Pryse, '_she_ was the farmer.' It was for her to dictate, for
+others to obey.
+
+Now, as she had foreseen, the marriage of Rhys had subverted all that.
+Not that Rhys himself had changed his manner towards his mother, but he
+had long held himself competent to manage the farm without guidance; and
+when there was no capable Ales at hand to anticipate her wishes, and
+even the orders she gave to her own daughter Jonet were apt to be
+disputed and reversed by the young wife, she felt much like a queen
+deposed. She did not, however, surrender her sceptre willingly, but
+pursued her own course as of old. As little was Jonet disposed to take
+orders from her sister-in-law.
+
+The consequent result was confusion, mismanagement, and altercation,
+Cate's voice having suddenly grown shrill and loud.
+
+Of course Rhys took the part of his wife--though dubiously--whilst
+William and Davy enlisted on the side of the mother or Jonet; so that,
+although the oppressor was no more, and the sun of prosperity was rising
+over Brookside Farm, peace spread her weary wings for flight.
+
+Outside, Jonet had an ally in Thomas Williams, and he did his best to
+console her with the prospect of escape to wifehood, and a home of her
+own--a home for which her own distaff and her mother's spinning-wheel
+were busily making preparation.
+
+Hot-tempered William was, however, the first to shake the dust of the
+old home from his well-shod feet.
+
+It was after a sharp altercation over the vexed question of home rule,
+which had left Jonet and his mother both in tears, that he startled them
+by saying--
+
+'Well, well, really, I did never be expecting to turn my back on the old
+place with pleasure. But I am going to Cardiff next week, to be doing
+some building for Mr. Morris; and, look you, it is rejoicing I shall be
+to leave all this noise and contention behind.'
+
+'Going away!' was the breathless, general exclamation, with varying
+addenda.
+
+''Deed, and sure you're welcome! You do be the most obstinate and
+worst-tempered of the whole lot,' from Cate.
+
+'Well, Willem, I'll be sorry to be seeing the back of you; but sure and
+it may perhaps be the best for all,' added Rhys.
+
+'What, going before I do be marrying?' questioned Jonet; 'but I don't
+wonder, anybody would be glad to get away.'
+
+'Going to Cardiff? Oh, my dear boy, my Willem, what ever shall I be
+doing without you? Will you be long away?' cried his mother.
+
+'Sure, and I cannot tell, mother dear. I may never come back to live
+here. And I am loth to leave you behind to be plagued with the
+"continual dropping" of a contentious woman, but I hope to have a farm
+of my own some day for you to manage, look you.'
+
+Peace-loving Davy now put in his word, in lowered tones, to William and
+his mother.
+
+''Deed, and I was be thinking for some time that the farm was not big
+enough to hold Cate and me. But if you be going away, Willem, I shall be
+staying to take care of mother here, till I can be making a home for
+her--yes, yes!' and he wrung William's hand as a token of brotherly love
+and trust.
+
+In a very few days William was on his way to Cardiff, having taken a
+grateful farewell of the vicar on the Sunday; for, although Cardiff was
+little more than nineteen miles away, even by the Caerphilly route, they
+were more than equal to ninety in these steam and railroad times.
+
+His mother parted from him with many rueful misgivings, and much good
+advice to resist the temptations sure to beset him in a wicked seaport
+town, much as an anxious country mother might in these days warn her
+untried son against the countless snares of London. And as she stitched
+her warmest flannel up into shirts for him, and looked up newly-knitted
+hose, her tears fell upon them silently as her prayers.
+
+His personal belongings did not occupy much space. A few tools,
+chap-books and papers, and his entire wardrobe were comfortably packed
+in his father's old goatskin saddle-bags; and Robert Jones, with whom he
+had had several conferences of late on the qualities of stone from
+different quarries, found him a good steady horse which could be left at
+the Angel Inn until Robert claimed it on his next errand to Cardiff.
+
+Robert Jones did him another service, the importance of which neither
+estimated at the time. He recommended him to apply for lodgings to a
+blind baker, named Walter Rosser, whose wife and niece were certain to
+make him comfortable.
+
+The baker's shop was easily found, but there was some little hesitation
+about admitting a stranger as an inmate.
+
+'What caused you to come hither in search of lodgings?' put the blind
+man, with his head on one side as if listening for the answer. 'And what
+may be your business in the town?'
+
+'Robert Jones the peat-cutter did advise me to come here. He said you
+was honest and respectable and book-learned, and that you would be
+dealing fairly with me. And that your wife did be keeping your house as
+sweet and clean as my own mother kept the farm. My business do be to
+build for Mr. John Morris, look you!'
+
+'There's a clear ring in your voice, young man,' said the baker then.
+'And what may be your name?'
+
+'I am Willem Edwards, of Brookside Farm, Eglwysilan,' answered he, with
+proud decision--just a little nettled with the blind man's catechism.
+
+'Oh,' said the other, 'I think I have heard of you before. You did build
+Owen Wynn's flour-mill. Yes, yes, we shall be glad to have you, sir. You
+perceive my infirmity compels me to be particular whom we receive under
+our roof, since I have a young niece here, who has neither father nor
+mother to watch over her, and we are bound to be careful for her sake.'
+
+'Yes, yes, sure, quite right,' assented the young man, after a glance
+beyond the baker and his wife at a blushing damsel in the shade.
+
+Shops at that period were constructed much as are Turkish shops to this
+day. Very few had glazed windows. At night they were closed in by flap
+shutters, divided horizontally; the lower half of which was lowered in
+the daytime to serve as a table or counter for the display of goods, the
+upper half being so hooked up by an iron rod as to serve for a screen
+from sun or rain. The shop doors were similarly divided, the upper half
+hooking up to the low ceiling inside. I have known many such doors in
+country towns in England, some of which are, no doubt, extant to this
+day.
+
+It will be readily understood that shops of this description, however
+small, were dark in the background, and to eyes less keen than
+William's, Elaine Parry's blush would have passed unnoticed. It required
+after-observation to perceive how neat and trim she always was, how
+bashful and retiring, and how quiet and subdued were all her movements;
+what a steadfast light there was in her clear, hazel eyes, and what
+pretty dimples in her cheeks when she smiled.
+
+He only noticed then that she remained quiescent when her uncle cried--
+
+'Come in, sir--come in! I'll mind your horse whilst my good dame shows
+you the room we could let you have.'
+
+Up one or two short flights of stairs with landings turning this way or
+that, then down a step into a short, dark passage or recess containing
+two doors, and he was ushered into a small bedroom, which to him was the
+perfection of order and comfort--nay, luxury. True, there was only a
+narrow truckle bedstead, with a flock bed upon it, dowlas[14] sheets,
+and a dark blue woollen coverlet, but he had never been accustomed to
+anything better; and there was a diamond-paned casement, with a table in
+front, on which was a coarse earthenware basin and ewer, and, hung
+against the wall, a looking-glass about the size of a sheet of
+note-paper, all luxurious intimations that his personal ablutions might
+be conducted in private. Then there was a fireplace in the room--just a
+couple of short iron bars fitted into the brickwork--and beside it, in a
+recess, a piece of furniture which puzzled William extremely. Yet it
+was nothing more than an oaken bureau, the drawers of which Mrs. Rosser
+pulled open to show that they were for his use if he became their
+inmate. The mystery of the turn-down flap for writing, the sliding rests
+to support its weight, and the enclosed pigeon-holes for papers was a
+revelation for the future.
+
+He was almost afraid to ask 'How much?' and was wonderfully gratified to
+find the terms below his calculations, and also that he was expected to
+take his meals with the family.
+
+All that settled, the door across the dark passage was opened, and a
+room with a larger casement was revealed. Here all was equally clean,
+from the well-scrubbed floor to the centre table and tall chairs ranged
+with stiff precision against the walls, whilst a broad seat beneath the
+window held piles of books, and the empty fireplace was adorned with
+large conch shells.
+
+'You can come and sit here if you want to be quiet, and will not make a
+litter,' said Mrs. Rosser. 'We seldom use the room, except when my
+husband is teaching.'
+
+'Teaching?' echoed William curiously.
+
+'Oh yes; don't you know he teaches people to read English?'
+
+'Does what?' he almost gasped.
+
+Mrs. Rosser repeated her words.
+
+'Then Robert Jones has been doing me the best turn he ever did yet, for,
+look you, I've been wanting to learn English reading for many a year.'
+
+How it was possible for a blind man to give such instruction was beyond
+his comprehension. He accepted the statement as one more of the marvels
+he had come across in the baker's comfortable home; and he brought in
+his saddle-bags, and gave his horse in charge to the baker's man, as if
+he were not sure he was wide awake.
+
+He very soon discovered it was just the difference between living in a
+town of some antiquity within reach of a prosperous maritime city like
+Bristol, and dwelling apart among the mountain wilds, shut out from
+general intercourse, and dependent on itinerant packmen for everything
+but home produce.
+
+Even in his meals there was some difference. If he still breakfasted on
+porridge, he was unaccustomed to see meat or eggs on the table daily, or
+to find the oven substituted for the big pot in cookery, and he missed
+the potatoes in which they indulged on the farm.
+
+When the shyness between himself and Elaine Parry, Mrs. Rosser's pretty
+niece, had somewhat worn away, he told her this.
+
+'Oh,' said she, 'they are too dear for us. They are two shillings a
+pound in Cardiff market.'
+
+'No, indeed! Then I will tell Robert Jones. The farmers do be planting;
+they will be cheaper before long, look you.'
+
+And before very long a sack of good potatoes was set down by Robert
+Jones at the baker's door, a present from Brookside Farm.
+
+In the interim William Edwards had not been idle. The site selected for
+the smelting works was just outside Cardiff, and within easy reach of
+the river.
+
+There materials had been collected, and with the sole assistance of John
+Llwyd, he built, in the first instance, a blast-furnace on a small
+scale, tapering like a cone, the ore and fuel for which had to be
+supplied from the top, there being an orifice below from which the
+molten metal would escape in a stream.
+
+An ordinary smith's bellows worked by Llwyd supplied the blast, a good
+fire of peat and charcoal being well alight before the coal and
+broken-up ore were thrown in. It answered fairly for a trial, but once
+alight could not be allowed to cool night or day. But the furnace being
+built and in working order, there was no difficulty in finding men to
+tend and keep it going.
+
+Of course this was an experiment on too small a scale for commercial
+success. At all events William Edwards had mastered the great problem
+how to utilise anthracite or stone-coal for the smelting of iron. It was
+there burning without smoke or flame, and pouring out a thin stream of
+molten metal into the sandy moulds which shaped it into bars, or
+pig-iron.
+
+Mr. Morris clapped his hand on William's shoulder, and congratulated him
+on his achievement.
+
+'Now, Edwards,' said he, 'you must lose no time in putting up another
+furnace or two on a larger scale. Let us show the world what genius and
+perseverance can accomplish.'
+
+'Yes, yes, sir; but I should like to improve on _that_,' pointing to
+what he had already done. 'And before building a larger furnace, I shall
+have to consider how the greater blast is to be sustained. It would be
+too heavy a task for manual labour if we are to keep large quantities
+of this hard coal at fusing heat for corresponding heaps of ore,' was
+the proud young fellow's reply.
+
+'No doubt, no doubt,' acquiesced Mr. Morris. 'But you will be certain to
+manage it in some way or other. And you know you are free to employ any
+workmen or materials you think best. Oh yes; when you set your foot on a
+difficulty you are sure to tread it down.'
+
+'Indeed and in truth, sir, I'm not willing to be beaten, and I don't
+mean to give in till I've conquered the obstacles here, look you,' said
+he, with set and resolute face.
+
+How he overcame the mechanical difficulty I have no data to determine
+after this lapse of time; but I incline to think he brought his friend
+Thomas Williams to construct a wheel, moved either by horse or water
+power, to supply the leverage required to keep the monster forge-bellows
+in motion. Twenty years later Smeaton invented the blowing machine for
+the Carron Foundry, in Scotland; but William Edwards was a mason and
+architect, not a mechanical engineer; and when he had completed his
+large furnace, capable of smelting with the hard stone-coal, he had
+achieved a victory likely to revolutionise the mining and iron-founding
+industries of South Wales--nay, almost to create them. He had saved its
+forest trees from utter annihilation. He had paved the way for Smeaton's
+feet to tread.
+
+Another furnace rose. The ironworks of John Morris extended and found
+occupation and bread for hundreds of workpeople besides those employed
+by himself. Fresh mines of coal and iron were opened around Castel Coch
+and elsewhere. Whole teams of pack-horses, tended by women and boys,
+were ever on the roads, bringing rough ore and coal to the smelters, the
+tinkling bell of each leader, or bell-horse, ringing a prophetic note of
+progression. It was some time before the invention of a low,
+broad-wheeled waggon, drawn by four or six horses, set these old teams
+aside; not, indeed, until something had been done to make the roads more
+practicable. And long before that, fresh shipping sought the old Cardiff
+quays to transport the pig-iron to final manufacturers alike in England
+and across the seas. Morris' smelting works seemed to have wakened the
+stagnant town from the lethargy of ages.
+
+All this was not the growth of a year or two. Eight full years was
+William Edwards working for Mr. Morris, and, whether consciously or not,
+for the advancement and prosperity of his country. Not alone was he
+occupied in erecting furnaces. Fresh workmen and their families required
+fresh homes, and who but William Edwards had the building? And for the
+period they were models. His name and fame as a builder travelled
+farther than his own feet.
+
+Yet it is not to be supposed that he stood still to let the stream of
+progress pass him by, now that he had opened the floodgates wide.
+
+Relays of men fed and tended the glowing furnaces night and day. The
+proud young architect and his contingent did their masonry in daylight
+hours.
+
+That did not mean inert repose or dissipation for him. He made holiday
+when his trial furnace was complete, to visit his mother and brothers
+and take part in his sister Jonet's wedding; but his brain was actively
+at work the whole time, and it was even on that busy occasion he set the
+bridegroom's mechanical brains at work also for mutual benefit.
+
+And whenever there was an interval between one great piece of work and
+another, he hired a horse and went home for a day or two, never without
+some useful or rare gifts for one and all, and never without calling on
+his old friends Robert Jones and Evan Evans by the way.
+
+Those were his only respites from work. His manual labour--for he worked
+alongside his men, and allowed no scamping or shirking--was over at
+dusk. But no sooner had he laid aside his tools, and washed away the
+tokens of his occupation, than he had a book in his hand--generally an
+English book, which he was doing his best to decipher unaided at his
+meals, as a preparation for private lessons, which the blind man gave to
+him by the household hearth, or in his bakehouse, or along with the
+adult class assembling twice a week in his upstairs parlour for English
+reading.
+
+In the bakehouse Rosser kept an alphabet, the separate letters of which
+were shaped and baked out of ordinary dough. And when the eager student
+had mastered the English pronunciation of these, which the blind man
+could distinguish by the touch, he traced syllables and words in his
+plastic medium, until ere long a well-known and well-thumbed book was
+put into the learner's hands to be spelt out, or read aloud, as he
+progressed.
+
+The blind baker was proud of his pupil.
+
+'You are the most promising scholar I ever took in hand,' said he; 'but
+your diligence is unremitting, and failure is impossible.'
+
+Yes, so diligent was he that in consequence of his absorption in his new
+study, Elaine Parry's shyness in his presence gradually wore away, and
+when she heard him stumbling over a word, she would pronounce it for him
+involuntarily, without so much as looking up from her sewing or
+knitting.
+
+Nay, the bashfulness became rather on his side at the betrayal of his
+own ignorance to a young girl, capable, through superior education, of
+correcting his slips and errors. But very soon he accepted her verbal
+hints as a matter of course.
+
+Later, when in a difficulty, he did not scruple to rise from his seat
+and cross the hearth to point out a phrase or passage he was unable to
+translate. And she, perchance, would lay down her work, glance at his
+book, and look calmly up in his face as she gave the true reading in a
+clear, firm voice.
+
+[Illustration: ELAINE PARRY.]
+
+After a time, for easier reference, he brought his own seat near to
+hers, so that he might have her assistance without rising. And, although
+his dark-brown head and her light one were thus frequently drawn close
+together, his one idea had such thorough possession of him, that his
+single-minded desire for knowledge disarmed the seeming familiarity of
+all obtrusiveness.
+
+Certainly, neither he nor Elaine had the slightest conception that
+anything was being taught or learned other than the King's English.
+
+She was too retiring and well behaved to thrust herself into the
+prominent notice of a stranger, so that after that first general
+impression that the baker's niece was a pretty and tidy young woman, he
+scarcely bestowed a second thought upon her.
+
+Mrs. Rosser's astounding intimation that her husband taught Welshmen to
+read English had swallowed up all minor considerations, just as the
+River Taff swallowed up all sorts of tributary streams in its course to
+the sea.
+
+Then, apart from his lingual studies, his furnace-building was ever on
+his mind. It was a very great and novel undertaking, and the whole force
+of his intelligence was brought to bear upon it.
+
+So that, although she moved before him in her daily occupations, and
+ministered to his necessities at meal-times, it was just as if a sister
+had been before his eyes continually. Certainly, she always wore shoes
+and stockings, and, on Sundays, the very set of her cloak and tall hat,
+and the border of white linen cap, had a grace and fitness most
+becoming. And she carried her English prayer-book to church so
+unobtrusively, and found her places so readily, he was bound to notice
+that; but _there_ some envy blunted the edge of admiration.
+
+Her influence was that of summer dew on vegetation. It refreshes
+insensibly and imperceptibly. Had she bustled about noisily, had there
+been any discord between her and her aunt, it would have arrested his
+attention with the jarring effect of a thunderstorm.
+
+As it was, she became part and parcel of his daily life, and it was not
+until he had been about three years in Cardiff that a slight illness
+which kept her in her own room for a week or ten days roused him to the
+consciousness how much he was indebted to her for the comfort and
+brightness of his surroundings.
+
+However intelligent a companion Walter Rosser might be--and he could
+talk both of the world and of books, having known both before blindness
+set in--he lacked just the touch of kindly appreciation so gratifying to
+the self-esteem of the rising young builder after years of
+home-snubbing; the word or two of discriminating opinion his niece gave
+so thoughtfully whenever doubts and difficulties beset him in the
+execution of his plans; for all was not fair sailing, clever as he might
+be, and there were times when he was glad of a sympathetic ear.
+
+He was restless and uneasy the whole time she lay ill upstairs, and was
+ready to ransack the town for tea, oranges, or any other over-sea luxury
+she might fancy. And he was never the same to her, or she to him, after
+she was back by the household fire, paler, but oh! how infinitely
+dearer!
+
+The touch of his horny hand, and the softened tones of his voice, said
+more than his commonplace words of greeting: ''Deed, Elaine, it's right
+glad we are to have you downstairs again. We have been missing you so
+terribly.'
+
+And there was more than the tremulousness of physical weakness in her
+low reply: 'Yes, and I am glad to be here. It is miserable to be shut up
+away from you all, giving aunt and you so much trouble; but we may bear
+with illness when friends are so kind.'
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[14] Dowlas, a coarse kind of linen.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+BRIDGE-BUILDING.
+
+
+It so happened that when William Edwards had taken his first holiday, in
+1741, to be groomsman at the marriage of his sister Jonet with his
+friend Thomas Williams, that he had found Caerphilly--nay, all
+Eglwysilan--in a state of ferment, owing to the exciting presence in
+their midst of the noted preacher, the Rev. George Whitfield, for many
+years the colleague of the Rev. John Wesley, and only recently separated
+from him through doctrinal difference.
+
+They had alike left their pulpits in the Church to go preaching and
+teaching throughout the land, in the high-ways and by-ways, denouncing
+the vice and folly and sin then rampant, calling sinners to repentance,
+admonishing their hearers to lead simple, pure, and Christ-like lives,
+and preaching the acceptable year of the Lord, at the same time holding,
+as it were, the flaming sword of God's wrath over the impenitent.
+
+It should here be told that, finding his dear mother made light of by
+Cate, and set aside on the farm so very recently her own, William had
+himself taken the first opportunity that presented itself to remove her
+and Jonet to a farm he had acquired in the Aber Valley--not far from his
+friend Thomas Williams--a farm for his mother and Davy to manage between
+them.
+
+His road hither, of course, lay through Caerphilly; and after having
+left the town behind him nearly two miles, he was surprised to find a
+concourse of people in a field by the wayside, not far from his own
+home, listening to a man in a clerical gown and bands, who stood on a
+pile of stones, and, with impassioned voice and gesture, besought his
+hearers to 'flee from the wrath to come.' His text had evidently been:
+'To-day if ye will hear His voice, harden not your heart;'[15] and he
+hammered at the 'to-day' until he drove it into the hearts of many
+around him. Women wept, men fell on their knees and called out aloud as
+emotion swayed them, and William sat like a statue until the last word
+was spoken and the preacher, worn out with his own fervour, turned to
+depart along with some friends of his own.
+
+William, like scores beside him, had gone to church and read his Bible
+as a duty; had learned the catechism the good vicar drilled into the
+youth of his flock; but beyond that his religion did not go very deep.
+
+George Whitfield's sermon, on which he had come so suddenly, was like
+the bow drawn at a venture, the sharp arrow from which smote the King of
+Israel between the joints of his armour; for so it pierced the heart of
+the young man, whose very thought of late had been of furnace-building
+and of English study.
+
+The face, the voice, the manner of the earnest preacher haunted him no
+less than his awakening words. And when Davy, who had been also a
+listener, laid his hand upon the horse's bridle, and spoke to him, he
+started like one aroused from a dream.
+
+To suit general convenience--the old vicar's included--it had been
+arranged that Jonet and Thomas Williams should be married at St.
+Martin's, Caerphilly--then only a chapel-of-ease to Eglwysilan; and
+there a fresh surprise awaited William Edwards, for when, the following
+day, the united wedding party from Brookside and Aber dashed
+helter-skelter along the road to the church, in their race to catch the
+bride, he beheld a gravely-attired procession on foot, somewhat ahead of
+them, proceeding calmly in the same direction. And, when their own
+panting steeds had been left behind at a convenient inn, he observed
+that, of the more decorous bridal party entering the church porch, the
+bridegroom, a man of some twenty-seven years, was no other than that
+same Rev. George Whitfield, whose words had burnt themselves into his
+breast, never to be effaced, and his bride, Elizabeth James, whom he
+knew by sight.
+
+He could scarcely keep his eyes off the man, or his attention on the
+business before him. Yet he could not fail to notice that the aged
+vicar, who was growing feeble and tremulous, was apparently conscious he
+had no ordinary couple before him to unite in holy matrimony, and
+performed the ceremony for both parties with unusual impressiveness,
+undisturbed by the sounds of giggling and tittering in the rear.
+
+Such giggling and tittering were of common occurrence, as was the rough
+struggle for the first kiss of the newly-made bride, and the Rev. John
+Smith raised no voice in rebuke or protest when such a rush was made
+towards Jonet.
+
+Not so the evangelistic bridegroom. No sooner were their names signed in
+the register, than with his bride upon his arm, he quitted the church.
+Then, surrendering her to the care of the sedate groomsman, he mounted a
+tombstone, and with uplifted hand and voice demanded attention.
+
+So unwonted was the proceeding, that even the most hilarious paused and
+drew near out of mere curiosity; but when they left the chapelyard they
+had received such a lecture on the reverence due to the sacred place, on
+the solemnity of the ceremony they were present to witness, and on the
+import for time and eternity of the vows there made in the sight of
+God--such a lecture as few of those there assembled were likely to
+forget.
+
+At its close, William, withdrawing from his companions, walked up to Mr.
+Whitfield and thanked him heartily for his discourses, both there and
+the previous afternoon. 'You have roused me from spiritual apathy and
+carelessness into which I never shall sink again,' he said, with
+characteristic decision. 'And should you come to Cardiff before you
+leave South Wales, you may count on me as an awakened hearer.'
+
+The preacher's influence did not soon die away. William had other
+opportunities for joining in the services led by the enthusiastic
+preacher, and in his zeal prevailed on the blind baker and his niece to
+bear him company. Rosser's infirmity threw him much within himself.
+Elaine was naturally of a serious cast, and the eloquence of the
+powerful revivalist moved them both greatly.
+
+This was long before the girl's illness to which I have already
+referred. But as William and her uncle conversed together on the great
+truths they had heard so powerfully expounded, or joined in household
+prayer, there can be no doubt a link was forged and strengthened to draw
+the young people closer together, however insensibly, than if they had
+spent their leisure in light chatter and frivolous fooling. Yet nothing
+had been said in the course of years of either love or marriage.
+
+Meanwhile William had made himself conversant with English. Then, at the
+instance of Rosser, he procured the works of Sir Isaac Newton, and
+devoted himself to the study of geometry and kindred sciences with the
+assiduity of a man bent on success.
+
+Barely had he completed his furnaces for Mr. John Morris when proposals
+for like work came to him from other quarters, offering him most liberal
+and gratifying terms.
+
+Then, and not before, did he open out all his heart to Elaine, and,
+proud of the distinction it implied, pressed her to become his wife
+before he closed his engagement with his first patron, or entered upon
+a fresh one which would remove him to a distance.
+
+He had come upon Elaine in the twilight as she stood behind the
+flap-counter of her uncle's open shop, with a few unsold loaves upon the
+board, and, elate with the prospect before him, never doubted she who
+had grown so dear to his heart would gladly put her hand in his to share
+his rising fortunes.
+
+He drew her closer to him as he stood beside her in the shade, and met
+with no repulse, for she owned she knew his worth and loved him dearly,
+but his soaring spirit drooped its wings under a sudden check.
+
+'Nay, nay, dear William,' she said, amid slowly falling tears, 'it
+cannot be. How I shall miss you, and grieve for you in your absence,
+there is no telling; but though I can marry no one else, I cannot leave
+my good uncle and aunt now they are getting into years. They have been
+all the father and mother I have known.'
+
+'But, my dearest Elaine, do not daughters leave their parents to become
+wives? I never expected such an answer from _you_. Surely, when I took
+that farm in the Aber Valley years ago, had I no deeper meaning than to
+make my mother and David more comfortable? Had you no suspicion that one
+day I should want to place my wife there, and make a home for both of
+us?'
+
+Her tears dropped on the strong hand that held hers in its clasp, but
+she answered never a word.
+
+'Elaine, dear Elaine,' he went on, 'I can enlarge the homestead, and
+extend the farm lands, so that your uncle and aunt could live with us
+all under one roof, if you will but consent.'
+
+'Don't, don't, William dear,' she sobbed. 'It is very, very kind of you,
+but it would never answer. You must not even suggest such a thing to my
+uncle. He is proud of his double calling as baker and teacher. How often
+have you heard him say with pride "he provided food for both body and
+mind; and no man with both his eyes could do more"? No, you would wound
+his self-dependence. I honour your good heart, but--I cannot leave
+them.'
+
+'Is there no one else can take your place, Elaine? How am I to leave you
+here alone?'
+
+She shook her head. 'They have no one but their married daughter in
+Bristol. What sort of a wife should I make if I failed in my duty to
+them? Besides, a wife just now would only cripple your freedom of
+action. We are both young enough to wait.'
+
+'Young enough if willing.' His obstinate temper was rising.
+
+'If it be God's will, it should be our will.' As she spoke she withdrew
+from his clasp.
+
+'Look you, Elaine!' he exclaimed, with something of his old passion.
+'The more a string is stretched, the sooner it breaks.' And away he went
+in high displeasure, leaving her standing there faint with her own
+effort at self-suppression.
+
+It did not rest there. He was persistent. She was firm. And he had
+neither won her consent to marry, nor come to terms for the construction
+of fresh smelting works, when another project was on foot, which was to
+make or mar the man.
+
+I have said that roads were defective, and that bridges were needed to
+span rivers which cut off communication between town and town, county
+and county, and shut up the vast mineral wealth of South Wales.
+
+Herbert, the new Lord of Cardiff, had made the Castle his residence, the
+discoveries in connection with Mr. Pryse having determined him to see
+with his own eyes, and to delegate irresponsible authority to no one. He
+strengthened the hands of Mr. Morris in his efforts to utilise the iron
+and coal of the county, and to provide remunerative work for the
+depressed population. And he did what he could to improve, not merely
+the decaying town, but the rest of his vast possessions in
+Glamorganshire. He soon became keenly alive to the necessity for better
+communication with his property on the other side of the Taff than that
+of ferry, or ford, or coracle.
+
+In this he was by no means alone.
+
+Other landowners, magistrates, and men who saw fortunes buried beneath
+the soil, or losing half their value upon it for want of accessible
+markets, grumbled and growled on their own hearths, or to each other
+when they chanced to meet, until the discontent became so general that
+the heads of the county met in conclave at the Angel Inn in Cardiff,
+and decided on the erection of a stone bridge over the treacherous Taff.
+
+Then came the question, 'Who should be the builder?'
+
+'There is no better builder whatever in all South Wales than Mr. William
+Edwards,' said Mr. Morris, with decision.
+
+'Indeed, and that's the truth,' came simultaneously from various
+speakers.
+
+'But he has never erected a bridge, and he is so very young,' put in
+another dubiously. 'It will be a work of difficulty. We should engage an
+architect of established repute.'
+
+'He never put up a mill until he built Owen Wynn's flour-mill, and he
+never put up a furnace until he built mine,' replied Mr. Morris; 'and
+you all know what those are. But, young as he is, you may take my word
+for it he will undertake nothing he is not competent to carry out, and
+he is certain to accomplish whatever he has set his mind upon.'
+
+A good deal of heated argument followed this speech.
+
+The former speaker adhered to his suggestion that 'some one of more
+eminence should be engaged--such a man, for instance, as Mr. James
+Gibbs, an architect of note.'
+
+His lordship shook his head. 'Yes; Mr. Gibbs is an ecclesiastical
+architect of note, but you require a bridge, not a church, or a'--
+
+'What? That old _Scotchman_!' burst from impatient lips. 'Did he ever
+build a bridge? And what should a Scotchman know of our Welsh rivers?
+And what would he charge?'
+
+That suggestion of an exorbitant cost virtually settled the business
+before Mr. Morris rose again, and with a wave of the hand to calm the
+patriotic hubbub, remarked--
+
+'I think, gentlemen, you will have to fall back on Mr. William Edwards.
+He is confessedly the best builder in all South Wales--a practical
+builder, not a mere architect. He was but a boy about nine years of age
+when he told me his father had been drowned in crossing the Eglwysilan
+ford, and that when he was a big man he would build a bridge there to
+save other lives. Believe me, he would put his heart into the work. And
+_he_ is not an alien.'
+
+On the following day, September 16, 1746, three gentlemen, dressed in
+deep vests, full-skirted coats, and three-cornered hats, more or less in
+conformity with English wear, presented themselves at the baker's shop,
+and asked to see Mr. Edwards.
+
+They were shown upstairs into the class-room parlour by Elaine, and then
+she tapped gently at William's door opposite in the dark passage, and
+told him he was wanted.
+
+He was at that moment seated, pen in hand, in front of his bureau-desk,
+with a sheet of paper before him, on which he had begun to indite his
+acceptance of the smelter's proposal.
+
+Who could be wanting him?
+
+Down went his quill; he thrust his arms into the short-tailed coat hung
+over his chair back, gave himself a shake, and in less than two minutes
+he was face to face with Mr. Morris and two strangers, to whom he was
+formally introduced as _Mr._ William Edwards. They were magistrates, and
+men of note in the county, deputed to lay before him the project for
+bridging over the Taff, and ascertain his willingness to undertake its
+construction.
+
+Mr. Morris had placed himself in the broad window seat, his friends had
+drawn a couple of the high-backed chairs between the window and the
+table to bring them closer together, and as William stood there with the
+full light of the setting sun upon his somewhat square features, they
+could perceive him start and rest one strong nervous hand upon the
+table, whilst his broad nostrils quivered, his bright clear eyes lit up,
+and his face flushed, only to whiten under the excitement of their
+proposal, and the remembrance of the unfinished letter upon his desk.
+
+There could be no second thought of his acceptance.
+
+'Willing to undertake it, gentlemen?' he said breathlessly. 'Competent?
+It has been my dream from boyhood; though I owe the first suggestion to
+a jesting hint from Mr. Morris. Stay, I will show you.'
+
+In less than three minutes he had fetched from the bureau in the other
+room--where he left a crumpled-up letter--several drawings of bridges
+in all stages of architectural finish, from the first rude conception of
+his youth, to the riper studies of manhood.
+
+By the time his contract with Mr. Morris expired, his design for the
+proposed bridge had been considered and approved, as also the site,
+close upon the Eglwysilan ford, midway between Merthyr Tydvil and
+Cardiff, so as to unite the already beaten road.
+
+He was elate and buoyant over the trust reposed in him; although Rhys,
+his mother, Davy, and other friends had been called upon to enter into
+bonds for the fulfilment of his contract, since he was to be paid as the
+work proceeded.
+
+The intending smelter, desirous to secure his services, consented to
+wait until he was again at liberty.
+
+The young architect's pride had but one drawback. He could not shake
+Elaine's fidelity to her uncle and aunt. She would not desert them in
+their old age.
+
+'It will be better for you to go to this great work unfettered by a
+wife,' she argued bravely.
+
+But he would not see the personal sacrifice she made, and went off at
+last in a huff.
+
+'This new business will be his solace,' she said. 'I must be content to
+do my duty, and leave the rest to God.'
+
+And neither her aunt nor her blind uncle knew the temptation she had
+resisted for their sakes, though they thought her quieter than before.
+
+She was right. His new business left William little leisure for looking
+back.
+
+He had gone over to Bristol to engage masons, in addition to those he
+had already trained, before he finally took leave.
+
+Then there was no running back. His first duty was to erect huts or
+houses for his workpeople and their families; and he took care they were
+such as should be of service when the temporary purpose was served.
+
+He had long before made John Llwyd his foreman--a good deputy on whom he
+could rely; just as he could depend on his old friend Robert Jones for
+the best of stone from the very best local quarries, or for his sand and
+lime. For the carriage of other matters to and fro he fell back on
+Robert's active young partner Hughes, for whom the peat-cutter's niece
+had jilted easy-going Davy.
+
+But ere the foundations of the bridge were laid and firm, the builder
+had engaged his brother-in-law, Thomas Williams, to supply the wooden
+frames on which his arches were to be fitted and adjusted. And so, with
+trustworthy coadjutors like these, the work went on steadily.
+
+At first he had to battle with the deceitful river; but he and his men
+watched the skies and did their best to prevent disaster, though more
+than one occurred.
+
+But the resolution of their master seemed infused into the men. If there
+was any doubt or hazard, he took the tools himself, and wrought until
+they were ashamed to hang back.
+
+Though he had a farm of his own but two miles or so away, and his
+brother's farm was close at hand, he occupied one of the new cottages
+along with Llwyd, and so was always on the spot.
+
+Besides that, he fared almost as his men fared. If a labourer's wife or
+child fell sick he helped them from his own stores or pocket; and his
+men worked all the better for his thoughtful kindness.
+
+His bridge-building had brought quite a colony upon the spot, not merely
+of the workpeople, but of others, who found they had money to spend and
+wants to be supplied.
+
+Soon he become conscious of another want. The Rev. John Smith, the kind
+old vicar, had died full of years shortly after Jonet's marriage, and
+the new vicar did not seem to recognise the strangers as part of his
+flock. So William, finding the non-observance of the Sabbath led to
+disorder, called the people round him, and from the Druids'
+rocking-stone read out portions of Scripture to them, now and then
+venturing on expositions of his own.
+
+So the weeks and the seasons rounded until at the end of two years there
+stood a fine three-arched bridge across the river, to be opened with
+loud acclaim and rejoicing--a bridge the excited guarantors pronounced
+firm and solid enough to stand as surely for seventy years as seven,
+the period for which its stability was guaranteed.
+
+'Indeed!' exclaimed the proud young builder. 'It is more likely to stand
+firm for seven hundred years!'
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[15] Psalm xcv. 7, 8.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+PONT-Y-PRIDD.
+
+
+It was a glorious day for the self-taught architect. The hanging woods
+on either bank of the river held nearly as many spectators as trees,
+whilst along the narrow roads came a motley multitude on foot or
+horseback, or in cumbrous, top-heavy leather carriages, drawn by four
+horses (less for state than necessity), poor as well as rich having
+assembled from all parts to witness the opening of the new bridge that
+was to do so much for the county.
+
+'To witness my triumph,' William Edwards phrased it. But then, too much
+diffidence was not the family failing. And, for a self-taught man, it
+_was_ a triumph.
+
+There was no room for two carriages to pass abreast, but the few there
+assembled crossed alternately, the Viscount's prancing horses leading
+the way. Then there was a rush of people, mounted and on foot; horses,
+ponies, mules, and asses scampering across pell-mell in such wild
+confusion and entanglement, amid shouts and untranslatable cries, as
+certainly tested the stability of the structure. And such
+congratulations greeted the builder as were calculated to turn more
+seasoned heads than his.
+
+Davy, full of brotherly pride and affection, had brought his mother on a
+pillion behind him; and there, surrounded by her children and her
+grandchildren, the old dame, overcome by her emotion in contrasting the
+present with the past, and witnessing the great work of her son and his
+reception by the gentry, fairly sobbed aloud, the big tears rolling down
+her tanned and wrinkled cheeks.
+
+'Name o' goodness, mother, I don't be knowing what you have got to cry
+for, whatever. People do be looking at you!' remarked Rhys curtly, on a
+hint from Cate.
+
+''Deed, I do be crying for joy. I never expected to be seeing a day like
+this.'
+
+'Do leave mother alone, Rhys,' quickly remonstrated Davy in an
+undertone. 'Her heart do be full, and it must run over, look you.'
+
+Evan Evans and Ales stood by, dressed in their Sunday best for the great
+occasion, a newly-breeched boy by the hand.
+
+'I do be wishing Jane Edwards would not be washing the new bridge with
+her tears, Evan--'deed, I do,' whispered Ales to him.
+
+'Ah, yes, it do be a bad baptism,' he echoed, shaking his head, which
+had been crammed with superstition on shipboard. 'And I do be hoping the
+rain will keep off, for the clouds be gathering over Garth Mountain,
+look you.'
+
+The rain did keep off for two or three hours, until long after the
+hand-shaking and speech-making were over, and the great people had
+dispersed, and all who had not stayed behind to feast were on their way
+homewards, thankful they would be able in future to cross the river
+dry-shod and out of danger, whatever the hour or the weather, the
+'cleverness' of the Widow Edwards' son being on every tongue.
+
+That son, however, had been surfeited with praise, and was moving
+amongst the crowds in irritable reaction seeking for some one he failed
+to find--some one whose approbation would have o'ertopped the highest.
+
+At last, when he was ready to bite his lips with vexation, a boy, who
+came riding hastily from the Cardiff Road, put a letter in his hand, and
+lingered as if waiting for an answer.
+
+The writing was Elaine's.
+
+The letter was torn open impatiently.
+
+Only a few blotted words:--
+
+
+     'DEAR FRIEND,--We hear your meritorious work is complete, and send
+     you our heartfelt greetings; but we are in great trouble, for Uncle
+     Rosser had a fit last night, and has not spoken since. Aunt is full
+     of grief. She has sent to Bristol for my cousin, for the apothecary
+     says uncle cannot live. You will pardon our absence to-day; and
+     believe me, your sincere well-wisher,
+
+     'ELAINE PARRY.'
+
+
+Two hours later he had left the feasters and was in the saddle, muffled
+in a thick riding-coat, speeding on to Cardiff through driving rain and
+the darkening shades of evening.
+
+When he drew rein at the baker's door he was too late for all but
+consolation. The blind man had opened his long-closed eyes on the
+glorious wonders of eternity.
+
+Never had Elaine felt so much the need of his strong arm and
+self-reliant individuality as then, in their overwhelming affliction.
+His unexpected arrival touched a sensitive chord and broke down the
+barriers between them. She sprang towards him, and clung to him weeping,
+as she had never done before.
+
+Amazement checked the flow of Mrs. Rosser's tears for the moment; and
+when he put out his hand to grasp hers, she too felt there was a strong
+friend to rely on in their extremity.
+
+Then was it first observed that he was wringing wet; and in hospitable
+cares for the long absent, the first acuteness of pain was something
+blunted.
+
+After that, as if he had been Mrs. Rosser's own son, he took all
+miserable details off their feminine hands. It was he, too, who met the
+daughter--Mrs. Elton--and her Bristolian husband on their arrival, and
+broke the distressing intelligence to them.
+
+Death involves changes. No sooner was the dead laid in the earth than
+the desirability of the widow's future residence with her daughter was
+openly discussed. Consideration for Elaine appeared the only obstacle to
+the plan.
+
+'I am quite willing to make a home for my mother-in-law,' said Mr. Elton
+in private to Mr. Edwards, with a show of self-complacent liberality,
+much as though he patted himself on the back for a praiseworthy
+sacrifice, ignoring the savings of years likely to bear her company;
+'but I cannot consent to burden myself with the young woman. And she
+cannot really expect it. She is no relation of mine or my wife's. She
+must look out for a situation. She quite blocks the way to an amicable
+adjustment of affairs,' he added irritably.
+
+William speedily removed _that_ block out of their way.
+
+'Do not trouble yourself about Elaine, sir,' put in William stiffly.
+'There has been a situation waiting for her over two years.'
+
+Mr. Elton opened his eyes. 'Indeed!'
+
+'Yes, sir. Two years back I pressed her to become my honoured _wife_,
+but her strong, sense of duty constrained her to repress her own
+inclinations, and send me away wifeless rather than desert her aunt and
+uncle in their old age. You can adjust your affairs irrespective of
+Elaine Parry, I can assure you. A good home and a loving welcome await
+her.'
+
+Mr. Elton was snubbed, and looked it.
+
+In less than three months there was a very quiet wedding at Cardiff, and
+Elaine went away with her husband to his farm, midway between his bridge
+and the ruined Castle of Caerphilly, where his old mother and Davy
+lived, within easy reach of Jonet and her husband. The few houses have
+multiplied since then into a village that bears the name of Aber.
+
+At first old Mrs. Edwards felt as if she was to be a second time
+deposed. And she expected Elaine's town ways would clash with her
+country ones. But when she found that Elaine deferred to her as she had
+done to her own aunt, and was desirous to be instructed in all that
+pertained to her duties on the farm, there was no word too good for her
+'clever son William's clever wife.'
+
+Then she could already knit and spin, and had brought her own wheel, as
+well as a shelf of books, and something in hard cash, so that, as Davy
+said, she was 'quite an acquisition on the farm.'
+
+William had built the house according to his enlarged ideas of domestic
+comfort. There were two storeys, and notwithstanding the very heavy tax
+on glass, it shone in every window, and these were of useful size. He
+had brought home along with his wife the bureau he had found so useful
+for his papers, and kept them and his books in a room set apart for
+himself.
+
+With the completion of the bridge, he abandoned to John Llwyd the
+cottage he had erected on the river's side, his new furnace work being
+within sufficiently accessible distance of the farm, so long as he could
+leave his efficient foreman on the spot, and his workmen also. He was
+glad then he had erected permanent and commodious houses for the men,
+instead of temporary huts, since there was still employment for them
+all. Explorations for iron and coal were going on in the vicinity. These
+created a fresh demand for labour, and a corresponding demand for roofs
+to shelter the newcomers.
+
+As he beheld the new colony of labourers and managers rising up, as it
+were, under his auspices, his heart swelled with pride and
+self-sufficient inflation.
+
+'Ah, yes,' he would say to his wife, 'this is all my doing. I told Rhys
+I would be the greater man. Yes, he must own it now, if he would not
+then. Look at my wonderful bridge. It will stand for ever.'
+
+He was saying something of the kind one morning, when his first-born, a
+boy he had named David after his brother, was about eighteen months old.
+He had the child on his knee at the time.
+
+Elaine had a shuddering dread upon her whenever she heard his boastful
+words.
+
+'Yes, William dear,' she said soberly, 'we know your skill is great, but
+I wish you would not boast of the stability of your bridge so often. We,
+as well as the bridge, are in the hands of the Almighty!'
+
+He put the child down hastily and rose to his feet. 'Surely, Elaine, you
+are not going to join the croakers? Rhys told me the other day, "Not to
+hold my head so high, for pride was sure to have a fall." Sure, I have a
+right to be proud if any one has.'
+
+'_If?_' murmured Elaine under her breath; but he caught the doubtful
+word, and, snatching at his hat, strode out of the house angrily.
+
+A thick mantle of snow covered hill and valley, against which the
+whitewashed houses looked grey and dingy.
+
+'It do be thawing fast,' said Davy to him as they met at the gate, he
+with a spade over his shoulder. 'I do hope the rain will be keeping off
+till the snow be all gone. But I don't be liking the looks of the clouds
+in the north-west.'
+
+'Why not?' questioned William sharply.
+
+Davy hesitated. 'Well, if the rain do come upon the melting snow, we
+shall be having heavy floods.'
+
+'Well, and what then?' snappily.
+
+''Deed, and I do be always thinking of the bridge when the floods come.'
+
+'Pouf! the bridge is safe if a hundred floods come.' And on he went,
+ruffled, but wrapped in self-opinionated vanity. He had forgotten George
+Whitfield and his Master then.
+
+Nevertheless, he went to take a look at the bridge and the river, on his
+way to the new ironworks, where his first furnace was already at work.
+
+'Ah, well,' he thought, 'the water _is_ high; but, pouf! that is no
+flood.'
+
+Towards afternoon a thin rain began to fall and liquefy the melting
+snow. As the men were leaving work, Llwyd came up to him with an anxious
+face and whispered, 'Master, the river do be desperately full, and if'--
+
+William looked as if he could have struck his faithful monitor to the
+earth.
+
+Yes, the river was rising and racing through the three arches with the
+swiftness of a torrent, surcharged with hay and straw, brushwood and
+mould, washed downward in its course, but they swept well under the
+bold archways and swirled away in eddies beyond.
+
+'There can be no danger. Those piers are firm enough,' he muttered, as
+if to convince himself as well as Llwyd.
+
+Dusk came down and blotted out the scene. In turning away he came upon
+Rhys, whose gloomy face it was well he could not see.
+
+Llwyd and Davy too were there, with other watchers who had helped to
+rear the bridge.
+
+'Tell Elaine I shall stay with Llwyd to-night,' said William to Davy. It
+was his first note of apprehension. Towards midnight he said, 'If the
+rain ceases there can be no danger.'
+
+But the rain did not cease. As the night fled and the morning hours
+advanced, the winds came howling and tearing like demons down the Taff
+Valley, driving the pelting rain before them in a mad hurricane,
+fighting for mastery alike with tall green pines and the bare boughs of
+elms and gnarled oaks.
+
+Gradually, as lapping waters undermined rocks and rugged banks, already
+loosened by frost and melting snows, along many a swollen mountain
+stream the surging torrent bore down their tributary reeds and shrubs
+and earth, along with riven boughs and uptorn trees, that beat like
+battering-rams against the good stone piers, holding their trust so
+sturdily. Then, eddying, the mighty current of the mocking Taff swung
+the tall fir-trees round and barred the still open arches cross-wise,
+one by one. Here, as in a net, the lamentable wreckage of the moors, of
+ruined cots and devastated farms, was caught and built up into a dam the
+turbid water could neither pass nor wash away. And rising, still rising,
+rising swifter than the rising sun, like a gigantic monster playing with
+boulder stones for bowls, the resistless river hammered with them
+against the parapet, and beat it in. Then, with a tumultuous roar as of
+triumph, and a deafening crash that startled sleepers in their beds more
+than a mile distant, the bridge that was built for centuries was swept
+away into irreparable ruin.
+
+A shriek, as of mortal horror, rose as an echo from the crowded banks.
+The three brothers and their friends looked in each other's whitened
+faces as the cost of the catastrophe cut keenly into their souls.
+
+Rhys groaned aloud.
+
+'There does never have been such an awful flood since I was born; no
+masonry whatever could be standing against it,' cried grey-headed Owen
+Griffith, as he leant upon his staff to bear up against the wind.
+
+He had seen the darkening glances cast on the luckless architect, and
+interposed to spare him the reproaches of coarse tongues.
+
+'Keep that consolation for those who have run no risk. It will not be
+saving Cate and the rest from ruin and beggary, through this braggart
+brother of mine and his bridge,' burst from ungovernable Rhys.
+
+'It may _save_ me and you all from ruin,' retorted William defiantly. 'I
+have discovered what a flood can do, and what must be guarded against.
+Before the term of our guarantee expires, I will span this river with a
+bridge no flood shall wash away. 'Deed I will.'
+
+A crowd had gathered. There were mocking voices heard beside Rhys'. A
+quarrel and a tumult threatened; for fierce as the war of the elements
+was the tempest raging in the breasts of men who had been closest
+friends.
+
+'Come away,' cried placable Davy, linking his arm within William's, and
+looking round him. 'When the Lord do be speaking men should be silent.
+Yes, and before the breath of His nostrils the best man's handiwork will
+go down, look you.' And whispering something to his baited brother of
+'home' and 'Elaine,' he drew him peaceably away.
+
+_He_ had no word of reproach, though he had staked the savings of his
+life, equally with Rhys, and his forbearance silenced others, then and
+afterwards.
+
+Nor did any reproaches or taunts meet William at his own fireside.
+Rumour had run fleetfooted before them with the disastrous tidings. The
+shock had thus been anticipated. Clasping arms and sympathetic words
+alone awaited him. 'It is the will of God,' said both mother and wife;
+'it is useless to rebel.'
+
+Strange to say, William Edwards was apparently the least cast down of
+any. In a day or two he had recovered much of his elasticity. He showed
+a brave face to friends and envious foes, and maintained that no man
+should forfeit his guarantee. He would replace the wrecked bridge with a
+better.
+
+There were men who sneered; there were more who sympathised, for the
+rebuilding would be at his own cost, and would sweep away all his former
+gains. Yet all friends did not desert him. Mr. Morris and the Viscount
+defended him against malicious attacks on 'unqualified pretenders.' No
+one could deny the vehement pressure of the terrible flood.
+
+His newer plan, a bridge of _a single arch_, and of a span
+unprecedented, was seen and approved.
+
+Workmen were not far to seek. Almost with the subsidence of the waters
+labourers were at work removing the still upstanding remains of the old
+piers, the tenacity of the masonry giving the undaunted builder fresh
+hope.
+
+On fresh foundations another bridge arose, Jonet's husband marvelling at
+the measurements supplied for the wooden framework.
+
+'Yes,' said William, whose pride and self-assumption rose as he surveyed
+the magnificent proportions of his bridge, 'I defy any flood to beat
+that down. Look at its breadth and height! Any volume of water could
+sweep under that arch! Yes, indeed, if it brought half a forest down
+with it. The piers were the mistake before, Thomas.'
+
+''Deed, yes!' assented the other.
+
+The keystone of the arch had been laid; time had been given for cement
+to harden; the wooden framework of the arch was being removed when this
+was said; only the parapets were wanting, and on those the men were
+beginning.
+
+Another day the last scrap of timber was gone. Rhys had come down
+sullenly to the water's edge, weighted by his responsibility, and too
+doubtful of his brother's skill to give even his perseverance credit.
+There he found Jonet and Elaine, each with an infant in her arms. A few
+idlers stood staring and gaping under the trees on the steep banks.
+
+All at once, with no more premonitory shock than a slight tremulous
+motion under foot that scared the working masons away, the keystone of
+the arch shot up into the air like a ball; the centre of the arch seemed
+to rise bodily and press upwards like an inverted V, as if impelled by
+superhuman force from the sides; there was a report as of a tremendous
+gunpowder explosion, a blinding shower of dust and flying stones
+whirling in mid air, a wide gap where a noble structure had been five
+minutes before.
+
+Draw a curtain over the scene of the collapse. Close the ears to the
+taunts and mockery, the scorn and derisive epithets, which assail the
+unfortunate architect wheresoever he goes. Everywhere, save under his
+own roof, where wife and mother and Davy combined to shield him. But
+only his wife can enter into his feelings, and alleviate his bitter
+humiliation. Where he is weak, she is strong, and her very touch is
+healing.
+
+[Illustration: ONLY HIS WIFE CAN ENTER INTO HIS FEELINGS, AND ALLEVIATE
+HIS BITTER HUMILIATION.--_See page 327._]
+
+Let us follow him into his little private room, and find him on his
+knees acknowledging in all humility his self-sufficient dependence on
+himself, his proud and confident trust in his own skill, his
+forgetfulness of the Lord, omnipotent alike to create and to destroy,
+from whom he derived whatever mental superiority he possessed, who had
+led him step by step to success, who had spoken to him by the warning
+voice of George Whitfield, and at last had broken his stubborn heart,
+and, with the thunders of calamity, brought him to acknowledge that,
+'Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it.'
+
+Out of that room he walked that day another manner of man.
+
+He was the first to confess that the haunches or side foundations of his
+bridge had not sufficient strength to bear the strain of the lofty and
+expansive arch he had imposed upon them. But he added, '_Please God_, I
+will yet, _with His help_, fulfil my contract, and build a bridge that
+shall stand, even if it leave me penniless.'
+
+Fonder was Elaine of her husband in his humility and misfortune than in
+the pride of his success.
+
+Davy had always stuck by him. 'He set no store by his bit of money
+whatever. William was welcome to every penny, if it was any good.'
+
+Others, richer than Davy, who had held aloof from the 'self-confident
+amateur,' as they called him, were moved by his newly-developed modesty,
+no less than by his indomitable perseverance and resolution (Rhys called
+it obstinacy) in the face of catastrophes that would have overwhelmed
+weaker men. And they honoured his integrity. When his fresh plans were
+ready, funds to 'assist' were ready also.
+
+Over those plans he had pondered and prayed. Like a flash it came to
+his mind that, as the single arch was a strength in masonry, a double
+arch--that is, a circle--must have double strength, and on that he
+formed his plan, to bind the haunches of his bridge with cylinders of
+decreasing sizes, not to narrow his span of arch.
+
+Once more the river-bed was cleared. But on the Sunday, before a stone
+of the new bridge was laid, he summoned his workpeople around him in the
+Druids' circle, and, standing upon the rocking-stone, he preached to
+them from the text, 'Except the Lord build the house, they labour in
+vain that build it,' telling the story of his sudden conversion, of the
+failure of his other bridges as providential instruments to save him
+from overweening arrogance and self-sufficiency; and wound up with an
+exhortation that they should lay every stone as if they laid it before
+the Lord, who alone could decide whether this or that man's work was
+good or bad.
+
+And so, week by week, as the work went on, Sunday by Sunday he preached
+and prayed amongst his men on that Druidical altar, consecrating it
+afresh to the living God, and dedicating himself and his life to the
+service of Christ.
+
+In like manner, when the last coping-stone was in its place, and his
+workmen had gathered up their tools to depart, he knelt down upon the
+bridge, and dedicated that with prayer, saying at the last, 'Keep Thy
+servant from presumptuous sins. And be the glory Thine, O Lord.'
+
+Thus, in 1755, when William Edwards was but thirty-six, he had completed
+his trinity of bridges over the terrible Taff. And there to this day it
+stands, fair to see, with the date of its erection upon it, a bridge
+with a wider span than the Venetian Rialto--a bridge pierced by three
+hollow cylinders on either side, rising gracefully with the magnificent
+arch as they decrease in size.[16]
+
+Upon the opening day, apart from the peasantry, the magnates of three
+counties flocked to see this wonder of a bridge, and the indomitable man
+who had created it, in the face of difficulties that would have daunted
+weaker men.
+
+As one by one Welshmen of note bent from horse or carriage to shake
+hands with Mr. Edwards and congratulated him on the unrivalled structure
+his genius had created, and he was heard to say modestly in reply, 'I
+trust, with the blessing of God, _this_ bridge will stand,' even Rhys
+admitted that, ''Deed, after all, Willem was a great man,' and Thomas
+Williams kept close beside him, as if desirous to share in his
+employer's glory.
+
+For Mr. Morris, the staunch friend of William Edwards, there with due
+ceremony, breaking a bottle of wine upon the parapet, had named the
+bridge 'Pont-y-Pridd'--The Bridge of Beauty.
+
+[Illustration: THE BRIDGE OF BEAUTY, 1755.]
+
+And when the loud acclaim had subsided, the speaker gave as a reason for
+the name, not alone the wondrous beauty of the structure, or the new
+features the self-trained builder had introduced into
+bridge-building, but that out of his failures he had built up an
+undoubted success, and out of seeming calamities built up another, if an
+unseen bridge, to span the turbulent River of Life and bear him securely
+across from this world to a better, the beautiful bridge of humble
+reliance on the Almighty Creator and Ruler of the universe.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[16] The largest is nine feet in diameter.
+
+
+
+
+POSTSCRIPT.
+
+
+From that day William Edwards' fame as a builder of bridges and smelting
+works was assured. But he could see defects in his Bridge of Beauty; the
+ascent to the centre was steep and toilsome, and although he was
+afterwards called upon to erect bridges, not only in Glamorganshire, but
+in Carmarthenshire and Brecknockshire, he built no more on the same
+model.
+
+His handsome three arched bridge over the Teify is pierced with hollow
+cylinders over the piers, adding beauty to strength; but in that as in
+others he reduced the height with more regard to the useful than the
+picturesque.
+
+He was a busy man, working for his family and the community six days a
+week, giving the seventh to divine service amongst his people--services
+so highly appreciated that in 1756 he was ordained to preach. And he
+was never a rich man, he gave so largely of his earnings to the
+suffering poor. And though he must have seen towns springing up around
+the ironworks he built, and highroads made to connect them, giving
+employment to hundreds of workers, he was nevermore heard to boast of
+_his_ doings. He knew and owned that the capital of other men had set
+his brains and hands at work.
+
+And when at a ripe old age he was laid to rest under the shade of
+Eglwysilan Church and its giant yews, he left his well-trained son David
+to inherit his fame and his faculty as a bridge-builder. But he never
+built a Pont-y-Pridd, and it is with the bridge and town of Pontypridd
+William Edwards' name is mainly associated, even by those who never
+recognise in him a pioneer of progress, a benefactor to South Wales.
+
+Indeed, since his day, to meet the increasing traffic, a canal has been
+cut from Cardiff northward, and the very course of the River Taff
+diverted, changing the character of the district I have attempted to
+describe as it was in my hero's day. More recently a railroad to meet
+the ever-growing demands of ironmasters, colliery owners, and others,
+has been constructed, still further changing the face of the country,
+now bristling with iron and tin works. A new bridge has, moreover, been
+thrown across the river, somewhat higher up the stream, a bridge more in
+accord with modern requirements, and which has in a measure superseded
+high-pitched Pont-y-Pridd; but the beautiful old bridge is still
+standing, a picturesque monument to the memory of its persevering and
+pious builder, and a reminder to this self-sufficient generation, so
+proud of its own grand doings, that, but for William Edwards and his
+bridges and furnaces, progress in South Wales might have slumbered a
+generation or more.
+
+
+THE END.
+
+PRINTED BY MORRISON AND GIBB LIMITED, EDINBURGH
+
+
+
+
+_A Selection from Books for Girls._
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+     | KEITH'S TRIAL AND VICTORY. By EVELYN
+ At  |   EVERETT-GREEN. Illustrated by PAUL HARDY. Gilt edges.
+ 3/6 |
+     | A well-written story of a young girl of high position, who,
+     | disappointed in her expectations as an heiress, learns nobly
+     | her lesson of self-conquest.
+-----+------------------------------------------------------------------
+ At  | CONSTANCIA'S HOUSEHOLD. A Story of the
+ 3/6 | Spanish Reformation. By EMMA LESLIE, Author of "Caught
+     | in the Toils." Illustrated.
+-----+------------------------------------------------------------------
+     | UNDER THE WAR-CLOUDS. A Tale of 1870. By
+ At  | E. F. POLLARD. With numerous Illustrations. Gilt edges.
+ 3/6 |
+     | A romance of the Franco-German War, showing how it affected an
+     | English family resident in Paris. Many of the scenes are drawn
+     | from the author's own recollections.
+-----+------------------------------------------------------------------
+     | A DIFFICULT DAUGHTER. By EVELYN EVERETT-GREEN.
+ At  | Illustrated by PAUL HARDY. Gilt edges.
+ 3/6 |
+     | The story of a madcap girl in wealthy circumstances, the pranks
+     | she played, the troubles she created, and the way in which her
+     | finer qualities gradually triumphed over the spirit of mischief.
+-----+------------------------------------------------------------------
+ At  | MARY MORDAUNT. By ANNIE GRAY. Large, handsome
+ 2/  | volume, gilt top. Illustrated.
+     |                                         [THE "ENDEAVOUR" LIBRARY.
+-----+------------------------------------------------------------------
+     | HETTY MARTIN'S TRIAL; or, Thorns and Roses.
+ At  | A Story of Home Life. By Mrs. LYSAGHT. Illustrated by
+ 2/  | W. DEWAR. Gilt top.                     [THE "ENDEAVOUR" LIBRARY.
+     |
+     | Showing how two girls and their mother left in poor circumstances
+     | through the death of the father, who was a farmer, bravely fight
+     | help life's battle, and find a long-lost relative, who comes to
+     | their and relief.
+-----+------------------------------------------------------------------
+     | A GIRL GOVERNESS; or, Ella Dalton's Success.
+ At  | By A. E. WARD. Illustrated by EVERARD HOPKINS.
+ 2/  | Second edition.
+     |
+     | A story of a young girl who, in controlling and influencing her
+     | pupil, a self-willed little lad, is led to look up from her old
+     | self-sufficiency to the true source of strength.
+-----+------------------------------------------------------------------
+     | MARION HARLING'S AWAKENING. A Story of an
+ At  | Eldest Daughter. By EDITH M. EDWARDS. Illustrated by
+ 2/  | SCOTT RANKIN.
+     |
+     | Showing how a country minister's daughter lived fretfully in the
+     | monotony of a dull household, until she learned through bitter
+     | experience the need for self-subjection in the joy of living for
+     | others.
+-----+------------------------------------------------------------------
+ At  | THE PILOT'S DAUGHTERS and FAITH HARROWBY.
+ 2/  | By SARAH DOUDNEY.
+-----+------------------------------------------------------------------
+     | CAUGHT IN THE TOILS. A Story of a Convent School. By EMMA LESLIE.
+ At  |                                 [THE "WONDERFUL SHILLING" SERIES.
+ 1/  |
+     | Relates the methods employed in a French Convent School to
+     | pervert two English Protestant girls who were sent there for
+     | education.
+-----+------------------------------------------------------------------
+ At  | THE KING'S DIADEM. By ANNIE GRAY.
+ 1/  |                                 [THE "WONDERFUL SHILLING" SERIES.
+     |
+     | Is a story for elder girls, and shows how the heroine gave up
+     | worldly pleasures to consecrate herself to the Master's work.
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+London: THE SUNDAY SCHOOL UNION, 57 and 59 Ludgate Hill, E. C.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Making of William Edwards, by 
+Mrs. G. Linnaeus Banks
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diff --git a/38212-8.zip b/38212-8.zip
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+<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+    "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
+  <head>
+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" />
+    <title>
+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Making Of William Edwards, by Mrs. G. Linnĉus Banks.
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css">
+
+    p {  margin-top: .75em;
+         text-align: justify;
+         margin-bottom: .75em;
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+    p.bold2 {text-align: center; font-weight: bold; font-size: 150%;}
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+    #id1 { font-size: smaller }
+
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+         margin-right: auto;
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+    body{margin-left: 10%;
+         margin-right: 10%;
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+
+    table {margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; padding: 5px; border: none; text-align: right;}
+
+    .pagenum  { /* uncomment the next line for invisible page numbers */
+            /*  visibility: hidden;  */
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+                left: 92%;
+                font-size: smaller;
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+                text-indent: 0px;
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+    .block    {margin: auto; text-align: center; width: 35em;}
+    .center   {text-align: center;}
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+    .left             {text-align: left;}
+    .tbrk	  {margin-bottom: 2em;}
+    .fnanchor         { font-size: .8em; text-decoration: none;}
+
+    .poem             {margin-left:10%; margin-right:10%; text-align: left;}
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+    .poem div        {display: block; margin: 0; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;}
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+    .poem div.i8     {display: block; margin-left: 8em;}
+
+    </style>
+  </head>
+<body>
+
+
+<pre>
+
+Project Gutenberg's The Making of William Edwards, by Mrs. G. Linnaeus Banks
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Making of William Edwards
+       or The Story of the Bridge of Beauty
+
+Author: Mrs. G. Linnaeus Banks
+
+Release Date: December 5, 2011 [EBook #38212]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MAKING OF WILLIAM EDWARDS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Chris Curnow, Lindy Walsh, Martin Pettit and
+the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="center"><img src="images/i002.jpg" width='462' height='700' alt="Yours Faithfully Isabella Banks" /></div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="bold2">THE MAKING OF WILLIAM EDWARDS</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>PUBLISHER'S NOTE TO POPULAR EDITION</span></h2>
+
+<hr class="smler" />
+
+<p>This book appeared originally as 'The Bridge of Beauty.' But on its
+re-issue in popular form it has been thought well to indicate in the new
+title the purport of the story.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="center"><a name="i006.jpg" id="i006.jpg"></a><img src="images/i006.jpg" width='416' height='700' alt="THE SEARCH FOR THE MISSING FARMER" /></div>
+
+<p class="bold">THE SEARCH FOR THE MISSING FARMER.</p>
+
+<div class="block"><p><i>Frontispiece.</i>] <span class="alignright">[<i>See page 16.</i></span></p></div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span></p>
+
+<h1><span>THE MAKING OF<br />WILLIAM EDWARDS</span><br /><span class="smaller">OR<br /><i>THE STORY OF THE BRIDGE OF BEAUTY</i></span><br /><span id="id1">BY</span> <span><span class="smcap">Mrs. G. LINN&AElig;US BANKS</span></span></h1>
+
+<p class="center">AUTHOR OF 'GOD'S PROVIDENCE HOUSE' 'THE MANCHESTER MAN'<br />
+'IN HIS OWN HAND' ETC. ETC.</p>
+
+<p class="tbrk">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="center"><i><span class="smcap">With Illustrations by W. Dewar</span></i></p>
+
+<p class="tbrk">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="center">SECOND EDITION</p>
+
+<p class="tbrk">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="center">LONDON:<br />ANDREW MELROSE<br />
+<span class="smcap">16 Pilgrim Street, E.C.</span></p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>CONTENTS</span></h2>
+
+<hr class="smler" />
+
+<table summary="CONTENTS">
+  <tr>
+    <td colspan="2" class="left"><span class="smaller">CHAP.</span></td>
+    <td><span class="smallerp">PAGE</span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>I.</td>
+    <td class="left">&nbsp;&nbsp;A THUNDERSTORM</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_13">13</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>II.</td>
+    <td class="left">&nbsp;&nbsp;WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_25">25</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>III.</td>
+    <td class="left">&nbsp;&nbsp;A BOY'S WILL</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_36">36</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>IV.</td>
+    <td class="left">&nbsp;&nbsp;PAYING THE RENT</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_46">46</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>V.</td>
+    <td class="left">&nbsp;&nbsp;THE NEW INMATE</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_57">57</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>VI.</td>
+    <td class="left">&nbsp;&nbsp;LOST</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_70">70</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>VII.</td>
+    <td class="left">&nbsp;&nbsp;THE YOUNG PLAGUE</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_83">83</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>VIII.</td>
+    <td class="left">&nbsp;&nbsp;THE DAY OF SMALL THINGS</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_95">95</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>IX.</td>
+    <td class="left">&nbsp;&nbsp;THE BAFFLED AGENT</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_105">105</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>X.</td>
+    <td class="left">&nbsp;&nbsp;FRIENDS AND BROTHERS</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_118">118</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>XI.</td>
+    <td class="left">&nbsp;&nbsp;A MEMORABLE ENCOUNTER</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_129">129</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>XII.</td>
+    <td class="left">&nbsp;&nbsp;CAERPHILLY CASTLE</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_141">141</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>XIII.</td>
+    <td class="left">&nbsp;&nbsp;MAN PROPOSES</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_152">152</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>XIV.</td>
+    <td class="left">&nbsp;&nbsp;WHERE IS EVAN?</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_162">162</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>XV.</td>
+    <td class="left">&nbsp;&nbsp;A STOP-GAP</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_179">179</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>XVI.</td>
+    <td class="left">&nbsp;&nbsp;DISCOVERIES</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_193">193</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>XVII.</td>
+    <td class="left">&nbsp;&nbsp;PROPER TOOLS</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_207">207</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>XVIII.</td>
+    <td class="left">&nbsp;&nbsp;IN THE GRIP OF A STRONG HAND&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_219">219</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>XIX.</td>
+    <td class="left">&nbsp;&nbsp;WITH GRANDFATHER'S GOLD</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_232">232</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>XX.</td>
+    <td class="left">&nbsp;&nbsp;IN THE NICK OF TIME</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_249">249</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>XXI.</td>
+    <td class="left">&nbsp;&nbsp;THE FINGER OF GOD</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_264">264</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>XXII.</td>
+    <td class="left">&nbsp;&nbsp;A BLIND INSTRUCTOR</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_280">280</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>XXIII.</td>
+    <td class="left">&nbsp;&nbsp;BRIDGE-BUILDING</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_298">298</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>XXIV.</td>
+    <td class="left">&nbsp;&nbsp;PONT-Y-PRIDD</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_313">313</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td></td>
+    <td class="left">&nbsp;&nbsp;POSTSCRIPT</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_333">333</a></td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.</span></h2>
+
+<hr class="smler" />
+
+<table summary="LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS">
+  <tr>
+    <td></td>
+    <td><span class="smaller">PAGE</span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="left">THE SEARCH FOR THE MISSING FARMER</td>
+    <td><a href="#i006.jpg"><i>Frontispiece.</i></a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="left">THE RIDERLESS HORSE FOUND ITS WAY HOME</td>
+    <td><a href="#i017.jpg">17</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="left">MOUNTED ON THE LOW WALL, ON HIS WAY TO EVAN'S SHOULDERS</td>
+    <td><a href="#i067.jpg">67</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="left">LYING IN THE MIDST OF THE HOARY CIRCLE OF GREY STONES</td>
+    <td><a href="#i079.jpg">79</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="left">'SO THAT IS HOW YOU PROPOSE TO CARRY ON YOUR FARM?'
+HE SAID, WITH A SNEER</td>
+    <td><a href="#i107.jpg">107</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="left">HE TURNED AND SHOOK HIS WHIP-HAND AT THE CHILD</td>
+    <td><a href="#i111.jpg">111</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="left">THERE WAS SOMETHING RATHER MYSTERIOUS ABOUT HER CARGO</td>
+    <td><a href="#i165.jpg">165</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="left">'YOUR RENT WILL BE ADVANCED TEN POUNDS PER ANNUM
+AFTER THIS DATE,' HE SAID</td>
+    <td><a href="#i175.jpg">175</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="left">HE FOUND MR. MORRIS SEATED AT THE TABLE AS WELL AS THE VICAR</td>
+    <td><a href="#i243.jpg">243</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="left">LONG-LOST EVAN HAD COME BACK</td>
+    <td><a href="#i253.jpg">253</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="left">BLINDED BY PASSION, HE SPURRED HIS HORSE TO THE UNCERTAIN FORD</td>
+    <td><a href="#i269.jpg">269</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="left">ELAINE PARRY</td>
+    <td><a href="#i293.jpg">293</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="left">ONLY HIS WIFE CAN ENTER INTO HIS FEELINGS, AND
+ALLEVIATE HIS BITTER HUMILIATION</td>
+    <td><a href="#i325.jpg">325</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="left">THE BRIDGE OF BEAUTY, 1755</td>
+    <td><a href="#i331.jpg">331</a></td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="center"><img src="images/i012.jpg" width='633' height='700' alt="CAERPHILLY CASTLE" /></div>
+
+<p class="bold">CAERPHILLY CASTLE.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="bold2">THE MAKING OF WILLIAM EDWARDS.</p>
+
+<hr class="smler" />
+
+<h2><span>CHAPTER I.</span> <span class="smaller">A THUNDERSTORM.</span></h2>
+
+<p>It was a sad day for Mrs. Edwards, of Eglwysilan,<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> when her well-loved
+husband, on his return from Llantrissant market one sultry Friday in the
+autumn of 1721, in attempting to cross the River Taff, failed to observe
+its rising waters, missed the ford, and was carried down the stream, a
+drowning man.</p>
+
+<p>Only that morning he had driven a goat and a score of sheep across in
+safety, the sheep following their agile and sure-footed leader, as he
+sprang from one to another of the out-cropping masses of rock, which,
+scattered in mid-stream, served alike as stepping-stones and as
+indications when the river was fordable, as it generally was in a dry
+summer.</p>
+
+<p>But the Taff, born in a marsh, and running through a deep vale, is given
+to rise as swiftly as the traditional Welshman's temper. Many are its
+seen and unseen<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> feeders among the mountain steeps; and, although there
+had been but a light passing shower in sheltered hill-side Llantrissant
+that day, farther north a heavy thunderstorm had burst in a deluge over
+bogs and hills; and down from countless rills and rivulets the waters
+had come flashing in leaps and bounds, to swell the tribute brooks and
+rivers alike bore to the Taff as vassals to a sovereign.</p>
+
+<p>William Edwards was as steady a man as any farmer in Glamorganshire, but
+whenever a group of them got together, at fair or market, there great
+pitchers of <i>cwrw da</i><a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> were certain to be also, either to cement
+friendship or to clinch a bargain, and the beverage was uncommonly
+heady.</p>
+
+<p>Now bargaining was a long and thirsty process, and, although he was
+thrifty and the ale was dear, when Edwards had completed the sale of
+goat and sheep to his satisfaction, he had imbibed a fair share of the
+common beverage; not, however, so much as to prevent other huckstering
+and bargaining on account of his wife. The stockings knitted on the farm
+had to be sold, or bartered for needles, pins, tapes, or shoe-latchets;
+he had to purchase a sieve, a supply of soap and candles, a pair of
+Sunday shoes for his little girl, and a couple of tin cans.</p>
+
+<p>By the time these were thrust into his saddle-bags, the sieve and
+tinware secured to the pommel of his saddle so as to balance each other
+above the bags, and a final draught of <i>cwrw</i> swallowed as a refresher
+for his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> journey, the afternoon had slipped nearly away, and with it one
+or two impatient neighbours on whom he had depended for company on the
+rough, circuitous road over the mountain ridge to the fords.</p>
+
+<p>Rough road indeed it was, little better than a beaten track worn by men
+and beasts constrained to pass that way; a road unsought except in dry
+weather, a rugged descent from Llantrissant to the ford of the Rhonda,
+and then up and down again, with stones and tree-roots lying in wait to
+trip unwary feet; for at that period the picturesque Vale of Taff was
+thickly wooded and scantily populated, and the roads were little better
+than deep gullies or natural stairways.</p>
+
+<p>His sturdy Welsh pony, however, was a thorough mountaineer, and, left to
+himself, jogged along without stumbling or straying, whatever the hour
+or the road. He took to the water and crossed the ford of the swollen
+Rhonda safely enough, although twilight was falling; but the evening
+shadows had deepened with every mile they trod, and grew heavier as they
+descended towards the larger river, with darkening woods on either hand,
+for there they rode through a veil of blinding mist.</p>
+
+<p>The mist had been gathering and the water rising rapidly, when Owen
+Griffith, one of his neighbours, who had prudently quitted the market
+three-quarters of an hour earlier than Edwards, finding the river
+evidently on the rise, had deemed it only wise to trust his pony's
+sagacity to find a trustworthy ford rather than depend on his own
+eyesight.</p>
+
+<p>It was quite a matter for after conjecture, but it was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> always supposed
+that the sagacious animal Edwards bestrode had grown restive and refused
+to take the unsafe crossing, and that he,&mdash;a man doggedly obstinate and
+wise in his own conceit,&mdash;unable to discern a reason for his faithful
+beast's rebellion, had forcibly compelled the reluctant animal to
+attempt the ford in spite of its resistance, as shown by hoof-marks
+beaten in upon the bank.</p>
+
+<p>Be that as it may, the riderless horse found its way home to the
+woodside farm on Eglwysilan Mountain, wet, foaming, and panting; the
+saddle and saddle-bags, drenched with discoloured water, telling all too
+surely that the uneasily watching wife was a widow, her four children
+fatherless. In such moments the mind always grasps at the worst
+suggestion.</p>
+
+<p>The distracted woman rushed shrieking to her nearest neighbour. Her
+awakened boys called after her, but she heard them not.</p>
+
+<p>The alarm spread. In an incredibly short space of time, considering how
+far apart lay the farms, and how few were the cottage homes, a score or
+two of half-dressed men and barefooted women were running or riding to
+the rescue, if such were possible. And wherever was practicable path or
+foothold, lanthorns were flashing along the steep and densely wooded
+banks upon the swiftly running river; but though it was seen where the
+poor horse had contrived to scramble up the bank, there was no sign of
+him they sought so anxiously.</p>
+
+<div class="center"><a name="i017.jpg" id="i017.jpg"></a><img src="images/i017.jpg" width='425' height='700' alt="THE RIDERLESS HORSE FOUND ITS WAY HOME" /></div>
+
+<p class="bold">THE RIDERLESS HORSE FOUND ITS WAY HOME.&mdash;<i>See page 16.</i></p>
+
+<p>The more fortunate beast had had a narrow escape.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Not forty yards ahead the chafing Rhonda came leaping and foaming to the
+deathly embrace of the Taff, and in the swirl of the confluent waters
+all hope was lost.</p>
+
+<p>Yet still the despairing widow urged the wearied explorers on; and moved
+by her piteous entreaties, Owen Griffith, their near neighbour, declared
+he would not give up the search until the farmer was found, dead or
+alive, if he had to go as far as Cardiff to find him. The man was ill at
+ease, feeling as if a little more urgency on his part might have drawn
+Edwards away from the market in time for safety.</p>
+
+<p>His determination arrested the steps of several others who were on the
+point of turning back, and they joined him readily, but only on the
+condition that Mrs. Edwards should return home with the rest of the
+women, and leave the search to them. 'You will be best at home, look
+you! Women have no business here!' said they, unnerved by her white face
+and stifled sobbing.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, yes, Jane,' urged the women. 'Think you of your children, do; and
+come back. It's crying in the dark, and all alone they will be, yes
+indeed!'</p>
+
+<p>And moved by the picture of her desolate children in their affright and
+grief, the sorrowing and agitated mother was drawn homewards, by the
+strong cords of maternal affection, to clasp them in her arms, and
+stifle her own anguish in attempts to impart the comfort she could not
+yet take to her own stricken heart.</p>
+
+<p>She was a religious woman, with a simple, unquestioning faith in the
+wisdom and love of her Heavenly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span> Father; and who shall say the effort
+held for her no healing balm?</p>
+
+<p>If she wept, she also prayed; and although two of her children, William,
+not yet a three years boy, and Jonet, a girl of four, were too young to
+enter into the depths of her grief, or comprehend her prayers, David and
+Rhys,<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> respectively nine and twelve, were old enough to understand,
+and to feel how disastrous a calamity had fallen upon them unawares.</p>
+
+<p>Before midnight the three youngest had cried themselves to sleep. Only
+Rhys remained, with his arms around his mother's neck, to share her
+terrible night-watch, and wait for what day might bring; his overflowing
+young heart swelling with unexpressed resolves to be her shield and
+protector when he should grow a man.</p>
+
+<p>In the grey of the morning Owen Griffith and his helpers came upon what
+they sought a few miles below Treforest, on the eastern bank of the
+river, flung ashore like a weed by the inflowing current of the Rhonda,
+and left there by the rapid subsidence of the temporary spate. Soberly
+and reverently they laid it on an extemporised litter of boughs and
+reeds, covering the face with Owen's coat, and slowly re-trod the miles
+to lay the disfigured dead down on the bed from which a hearty man had
+risen the preceding morn.</p>
+
+<p>There is no antidote to inconsolable grief like active employment, work
+which exercises hand and brain and cannot be set aside. Such is the
+daily work on a farm; and though kindly neighbours had taken care of
+the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> poor horse and its burden, had dressed the younger children, and
+volunteered assistance in other small household matters, neither the
+cows nor the goats would submit to be milked by strange hands.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Edwards had, fortunately, no time to indulge in grief. She was a
+woman of determined energy and practical piety; and after the first
+overwhelming outburst of natural emotion, turned to her ordinary duties
+as if awakened to the consciousness that all the care and responsibility
+of farm and family rested on her individual shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>Dashing the tears from her eyes, she snatched up a milking-stool and
+pail, and was off up the hill-side, Rhys darting after her with a
+smaller stool and pail to milk the she-goats, not for the first time,
+but for the first time voluntarily. His initiatory lessons had been
+taken that summer, with his father standing over him to keep the
+refractory in order, whether biped or quadruped.</p>
+
+<p>He had not taken kindly to the task at the time, having all a boy's
+fondness for play, and would rather have gone bird-nesting than
+goat-milking. But <i>now</i> that his father was gone&mdash;so suddenly taken from
+them&mdash;he, too, seemed to feel as if new duties devolved on him, and
+that, boy though he was, he must aim at the work of a man, and spare his
+widowed mother all he could.</p>
+
+<p>The idea was scarcely spontaneous. He had overheard a knot of gossips
+lamenting that Farmer Edwards had not left a son old enough to take his
+place on the farm, and help his mother to rear the younger ones as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> in
+duty bound. And he had straightway resolved to prove the gossips in the
+wrong.</p>
+
+<p>'If I am not old enough to take my father's place, I am old enough to do
+my duty, and I shall get older and stronger every year. They shall see
+what I can do to help mother; and as for my brothers and sister, am I
+not the eldest, and ten whole years older than William? Sure I can take
+care of them&mdash;at least I can try.'</p>
+
+<p>If this was not absolutely the boy's colloquy, it comes near enough to
+its spirit. There was something of the father's masterfulness in Rhys,
+and, directed to noble purposes, it might serve the widow in good stead.
+And noble purpose may be shown in small things as in great; indeed, is
+stronger in the lesser, where it makes no show, than in great deeds,
+which make a parade and attract applause. The only danger with Rhys was
+that, self-inflated, he might develop an obtrusively dominant will that
+should override his better qualities. At present his sole desire was to
+relieve his overburdened mother, and protect his sister and brothers&mdash;a
+worthy and noble aim for a boy of his age.</p>
+
+<p>But a boy reared on a small farm in those primitive days was not the
+helpless creature progress and modern manners have manufactured between
+them. Very primitive indeed was Welsh farming in the last century,
+primitive as the farms themselves. But no child of seven or eight was
+too young for work of some kind or other, whether reared in the
+labourer's windowless hut or on the farmer's own wide hearth. If only
+stone-picking, weeding, or rook-scaring, there was always<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> something to
+be done, something to keep active and restless boys and girls out of
+mischief before they were old enough to drive the cows to pasture, or
+assist shepherd and husbandman.</p>
+
+<p>Of school-going there was little enough; even dame-schools were as
+scarce in wild Wales as in rural England; but there was generally a
+substitute by the fireside, and the man who could not read was far less
+common in the little Principality than in the larger kingdom.</p>
+
+<p>Still more scarce was the woman or man who could not knit. When a child
+was six years old, it was time to put knitting-pins into the little
+fingers to learn the simple stitch. And wander where you would, over the
+mountains or along the rough roads, you were sure to meet man or maid,
+on horseback or on foot, stocking-knitting with mechanical precision.</p>
+
+<p>In the long winter evenings, when the only illumination was from the
+culm fire, the solitary candle, or homemade rushlight, knitting and
+spinning filled up usefully the darkened hours. And perchance then the
+big Welsh Bible Dr. Parry had provided for his countrymen a century
+before would be brought out and laid on the table close to the solitary
+candle, to be read aloud or spelled out by the growing boy or girl,
+under paternal instruction. On the Sabbath this was surely so.</p>
+
+<p>Under such training it was clear that Rhys at twelve years of age would
+be more capable and practically helpful to his mother than a modern
+farmer's son, who sees the farm only in the holidays, or out of school
+hours, who handles tennis or cricket bat instead of spade and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span>
+pitchfork, and never did a day's hard work in his young life.</p>
+
+<p>When Rhys bravely resolved to work like a man, he knew what lay before
+him to do and to learn. Farming on a thin, unproductive stratum of soil
+in a mountain land is no child's play.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Pronounced Egloois-ilian.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> <i>Cwrw da</i>, good ale. The <i>w</i> has the sound of <i>oo</i>; thus
+<i>cooroo</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> Rhys, pronounced Rees.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>CHAPTER II.</span> <span class="smaller">WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN.</span></h2>
+
+<p>Is there any record of a catastrophe so great or appalling that it could
+not possibly have been worse?</p>
+
+<p>In the first hours of her sudden bereavement, Mrs. Edwards felt as if an
+overwhelming flood of desolation had swept over her, and left her and
+her orphans helpless and hopeless. Not that her husband had been the
+most active spirit on the farm, but she was in no condition to reason or
+to weigh probabilities. She had not been wont to rely on him for advice
+or action, but in losing him she felt as if all was lost.</p>
+
+<p>An apparently small matter roused her to the consciousness that there
+were depths of misery into which she had not been plunged, and that even
+out of her affliction she had cause to thank God for sparing a double
+blow.</p>
+
+<p>When the drowned man had been discovered, he had been bruised and beaten
+against rocks and stones until his grey frieze coat was torn into shreds
+and tatters. But it was afterwards found that the old stocking-foot he
+carried as a money bag had been securely buttoned up in his breeches
+pocket, and the produce of his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span> sales at the Friday's market was there
+intact in hard coin.</p>
+
+<p>In the extremity of her grief for her one great loss she had overlooked
+the probability of the smaller. Not till the saturated bag was handed to
+her unopened did she realise what might have been.</p>
+
+<p>As she poured the gold and silver out on her lap, she clasped her hands
+and fervently thanked God that in His wrath He had remembered mercy.</p>
+
+<p>'I had forgotten that the sheep and goat had been sold to make up the
+half-year's rent. Yes, indeed I had. And what would become of the farm
+and the poor children if the rent could not be paid? Pryse, the agent,
+would turn us out for a better tenant than a poor widow, look you! But
+he shall see what a woman can do. The good God has not quite forsaken
+us.'</p>
+
+<p>She wept again at the thought, and little William and Jonet having drawn
+close to her side questioning her with innocent eyes and tongues, she
+clasped them both in a close embrace, and, without trusting herself to
+answer, rose from her wooden stool and carried the recovered coin to a
+safe hiding-place in the big chest, her sad heart much lightened of its
+load.</p>
+
+<p>Barefooted David, who was still petticoated&mdash;his nine years bringing no
+title to the dignity of week-day shoes or breeches,&mdash;ran with all speed
+in search of Rhys, to carry the news that a bag of money had been found
+in his father's pocket, and that his mother was crying over it.</p>
+
+<p>Rhys was just then feeding the pigs in a stone trough,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> placed where
+they were walled in like sheep in a fold. He almost dropped the pail he
+was emptying, he turned round so sharply.</p>
+
+<p>'Crying? What for?'</p>
+
+<p>''Deed, I think it was about being turned out of the farm,' answered
+Davy, who had caught the words imperfectly, as he hurried out at the
+doorway.</p>
+
+<p>Rhys looked aghast. What became of his heroic resolution to work for his
+brothers and sister if they left the farm?</p>
+
+<p>'Turned out of the farm?' he echoed incredulously. Had not his father
+and grandfather been born upon it? It would be like tearing up an oak
+tree by the roots.</p>
+
+<p>''Deed, and she said it,' replied David, as if injured by the doubt.</p>
+
+<p>Down went the empty pail on the stones, and into the house strode Rhys,
+alternately red and white with excitement.</p>
+
+<p>He could scarcely get the words out, they seemed to choke him. 'Davy
+says,' he began with a gasp, 'that we are to leave the farm'&mdash;he could
+not bring himself to say 'be turned out.'</p>
+
+<p>'Nay, Rhys, not now I have all the money for the rent, thank God! If
+that had been lost in the river, I cannot tell what might have happened.
+There would be no chance of selling cows or pigs, or the oats, or
+anything before the rent-day, and Mr. Pryse would not wait an hour. "Out
+you go!" would be his word. "There's a man will give ten guineas more
+rent for it, and keep the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> land in better condition." Yes, look you, he
+has been saying that these three years, and now it's he will be for
+saying a woman will not be able to keep the hundred acres and pay my
+lord his forty pounds. It's poor land, so much rock and bog and wood,
+and he knows it, so much barren hill-side, scarcely fit to pasture the
+few sheep and goats. Yes, 'deed it will take hard work to make the farm
+pay now the husbandman is gone. Ah, yes, yes! We have had a terrible
+loss, Rhys, <i>fach</i>.'<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a></p>
+
+<p>As she spoke the last words the poor widow's tears gushed forth again,
+and would not be restrained. The flowers she was strewing over the
+sheet-covered form of her dead fell to the floor, and she dropped on her
+knees beside the bed, where it was her mournful duty to watch, and hid
+her face with her hands as if to conceal the passion of grief she could
+no longer control.</p>
+
+<p>Rhys was sobbing too, though he strove against it in his effort to be
+manly. His arm went round her heaving shoulders with an unstudied air of
+natural protection, and in a broken voice he begged her to be calm. Not
+that he was by any means calm himself, but he was feeling early the need
+for self-restraint.</p>
+
+<p>'Don't, mother, don't,' he murmured; 'you will be making yourself ill,
+and then who will mind the farm or the children? I will be a good steady
+boy, and will work as hard almost as a man. You shall not miss father
+more than I can help, look you. And sure we have a terrible loss; but,
+mother dear, it might be worse<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> if we did lose the farm and all, as Davy
+did say. You are a good farmer, so Owen Griffith do say, and you will be
+teaching me.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, indeed, please God, and you shall be a good farmer too, Rhys,'
+sobbed she, drying her eyes on her long check apron, and giving him a
+look of profound trust and loving motherhood, whilst he drew himself up
+with a renewed sense of importance.</p>
+
+<p>At that moment a figure darkened the bedroom doorway. In stepped a
+fresh-looking young woman with bare legs and feet, short petticoats of
+striped flannel, a dark blue woollen cloak, and a man's tall hat worn
+over a plain linen cap, white as a snowdrop, though the stray locks
+beneath it might have been more orderly had looking-glasses been more
+common. She had a bundle on her left arm, a stocking she was knitting in
+her hand, whilst little Willie held her fast by the other, and Jonet
+clung to her cloak.</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, Ales,<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> is that you?' burst from Mrs. Edwards with an evident gasp
+of relief. 'You was not expected back so soon. Had you heard of our
+loss? Is your poor mother well again?'</p>
+
+<p>'Not quite well, but better, look you. She can sit up, and Mary may
+manage to do for her now, perhaps.' There was a dubious tone in the
+'perhaps,' but she went on to say, 'Mother would not let me stay when
+she heard of your great trouble, after you was so kind as to let me go
+away to nurse her. It was not right I should stay at Caerphilly when you
+was being left all alone by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span> yourself, with nobody to keep watch with
+you or to help at all;' and she passed into the kitchen as she spoke.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, <i>I'm</i> here, Ales,' thrust in Rhys, as he followed. 'I shall help
+mother now; yes, indeed!'</p>
+
+<p>'You?' ejaculated Ales incredulously, whilst divesting herself of
+bundle, cloak, etc. 'Help's a little word and soon said, but it's not
+much more than the saying we will be getting from you, Rhys. You never
+was fond of work, whatever!'</p>
+
+<p>Rhys pulled himself up as if insulted. 'You shall see,' he said loftily,
+and quitted the kitchen, where Mrs. Griffith was paring turnips for
+dinner, his chin in the air. And not another word did he vouchsafe to
+the young woman, his mother's hired servant. He might, by his manner,
+have expected her to understand his altered position and good resolution
+intuitively, but she only knew him as a lad with more liking for play
+than work, and expected no more from the present than from the past.
+Nay, perhaps less, now there was no father to drive him to his daily
+tasks and thrash him into industry.</p>
+
+<p>It was a time of unusually painful bustle and excitement, yet there was
+no cheeriness about the daily tasks. Indoors there was a hush even in
+the scrubbing of benches, tables, and platters, almost in the dash of
+the churn, for was not the widow still keeping her watch by the
+dead&mdash;the dead who could not be buried on the third day, but must wait
+until coroner and jury could be called together to verify the cause of
+Mrs. Edwards' widowhood?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> Mrs. Griffith was there, alternately to help
+Ales with her work, and to relieve the mourner&mdash;a kind, motherly sort of
+woman, one to rely on in emergency.</p>
+
+<p>Out of doors Rhys kept David well employed, telling him he would have to
+learn to be a man, directing him to do this or that with quite an
+elder-brotherly air of proprietorship, though not unkindly. Ales
+wondered what had come to him, he worked about the farm with so much
+more knowledge of the right thing to be done at the right time than she
+had given him credit for possessing.</p>
+
+<p>As for poor little Jonet and William, they shrank whispering into
+corners out of everybody's way, or slunk out into the bit of ground that
+did duty for a garden, or strayed into the orchard, where they made
+themselves useful picking up windfall apples for the pony and the pigs,
+and did their best to make themselves ill by eating the unripe fruit at
+the same time; for although four years old Jonet was imitative in
+assuming a protectorate over her two years brother, she had not herself
+outlived a childish love for the crude and indigestible. They were,
+fortunately, too young to comprehend the mystery of the closed room, yet
+the general air of restraint affected even them, as they went about hand
+in hand.</p>
+
+<p>The valley of the Taff has long been noted for its fertility. It was
+otherwise in the early years of the last century, when husbandry in
+Wales was so primitive that the spade did duty for the plough, and crops
+had to be wrung from exhausted soil wholly by hand-labour;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span> ignorance,
+and old prejudice in favour of doing as their fathers had done before
+them, standing in the way of progress, equally with the paucity of good
+roads and bridges over which to convey produce.</p>
+
+<p>In places the lowlands near the river were fertile; and where the stream
+was bordered by lofty slopes, and not hemmed in by precipitous limestone
+crags, they were clothed with dense woods of fir and mountain ash, oak
+and beech, with sallows by the water edge, all more esteemed by the
+sparse population for their timber than for their wondrously picturesque
+beauty. But at the top of the mountain range eastward of the vale, and
+on their upper slopes, much of the ground was sour and boggy, and called
+for more agricultural knowledge and appliances than had found their way
+thither, even when this century was born.</p>
+
+<p>The farm of the Edwardses was so situated on the mountain-side, and
+certainly enjoyed a diversity of soil capable of development in capable
+hands. In Eglwysilan parish it was regarded as a fairly large farm, and
+the house was the envy of the neighbours, though my modern readers may
+think there was little to envy. It had not only three rooms besides the
+capacious kitchen, but that kitchen could boast two glazed windows, one
+on either side the entrance; a very rare distinction, except in good
+houses or towns, so rare that not even shutters closed the apertures
+through which air and light found their way to the two sleeping rooms or
+to the long apartment in the rear, which served a variety of purposes.
+These were the housing of general stores, household and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span> farming
+implements, a passage being kept clear from the kitchen midway through
+to the back door and farmyard. And this was all the isolation considered
+necessary for the dairy and dairy utensils, notwithstanding the purpose
+to which the other half of its space was devoted.</p>
+
+<p>All these separate rooms were upon the ground floor. Stairs were almost
+unknown conveniences in the cots and farms of wild Wales. Even in the
+villages few were the inhabitants privileged to look down upon poorer
+neighbours from upper windows. Lime, however, was plentiful in
+Glamorganshire, and though walls were put together of roughly hewn
+stone, they were whitewashed both inside and out with conscientious
+frequency.</p>
+
+<p>In no place short of a mansion was much furniture to be found. And to
+say that Mrs. Edwards had a well-scrubbed dresser filled with wooden
+platters and with mugs of Staffordshire pottery; that she had not only a
+large oaken table, but a linen cloth to cover it on occasion, and that
+there was a chair near the chimney corner in addition to the high-backed
+bench, or settle, and the three-legged stools; that a spinning-wheel
+stood between the two bedroom doors opposite to the fireplace, and that
+a large oaken chest stood under one window containing the family stock
+of clothing, and of flannel the wheel had helped to spin, was to say
+that she was for her time and place a thrifty, well-to-do woman,
+somewhat in advance of her class.</p>
+
+<p>However, the great feature of the kitchen was the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span> expansive open
+fireplace, where the fire was made on a broad hearthstone, slightly
+raised, the inside of the chimney, which sloped upwards towards the top
+like a narrowing funnel, being set with stone seats for the elders of
+the family.</p>
+
+<p>On the Tuesday following the catastrophe which had made Mrs. Edwards a
+widow&mdash;although all the morning there had been the trampling through of
+coroner and jurymen&mdash;a fierce fire of peat and fire-balls filled the
+whole of the hearth, and two huge iron pots like witches' cauldrons hung
+suspended by chains above it, bubbling and steaming. At the same time,
+in the large oven built into the wall on the right of the fireplace, she
+and her helpers had been baking spiced cake and oaten bread the whole of
+the morning, as if providing for a regiment of soldiers.</p>
+
+<p>It was a hot day and hot work, though casements and doors stood open to
+let out the vaporous fumes of cookery; and had not neighbourly Mrs.
+Griffith come with her young daughter Cate to the assistance of Ales and
+her troubled mistress, the former would have been unable to relieve Rhys
+of his voluntary but fatiguing duty at the remorseless churn, so great,
+if not unusual, were the preparations for the guests expected on the
+morrow.</p>
+
+<p>Indeed, as Mrs. Edwards said, she did not know what she could possibly
+have done without Owen Griffith and his wife, they had been such zealous
+friends to her in her great affliction.</p>
+
+<p>She was not aware how the man's tender conscience<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span> stung him for leaving
+Edwards to return home alone from Llantrissant. He was feeling himself
+in some sort responsible for her bereavement. At any rate, no brother
+could have served her in better stead had a brother been at hand.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> <i>Fach</i>, equivalent to the English dear.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> Ales, pronounced Alis; in English, Alice.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>CHAPTER III.</span> <span class="smaller">A BOY'S WILL.</span></h2>
+
+<p>As my story concerns not the dead man, but the family he left behind, I
+might pass over his burial in silence, had it not been marked by
+peculiar customs, few traces of which remain. Mountainous and
+inaccessible regions retain their characteristic traits of life and
+language long after intercourse has fused together the differing speech
+and habits of dwellers on the plains, whether city or suburban.</p>
+
+<p>It was the last watch-night, and neither Ales nor her mistress had been
+in bed for a couple of nights, the girl electing to share the widow's
+watch beside the closed coffin of her good master, as Rhys would still
+have done had his careful mother not forbidden.</p>
+
+<p>But long before the grey mists of morning had risen above the tree-tops,
+or lifted off the mountain-side, Rhys was up and astir with them. There
+was no leisure for indulgence in grief. There was so much to be done and
+cleared away before the mournful business of the day began. There were
+flowers to gather to strew upon the coffin-lid, and carry to the grave.
+And, if the sheep and cattle out on the hill-side could find pasture for
+them<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span>selves, the cows and ewes must be milked, the pigs and poultry fed,
+or released to feed themselves.</p>
+
+<p>So Rhys and Ales were off betimes, laden with empty pails; bare-legged
+Ales brushing the dew from the gorse and heather as she trudged along
+with a pitcher balanced on her head, a stool tucked under one arm, a
+pail on the other, her knitting, for a wonder, left behind; Rhys, by her
+side, swinging a large milking-pail to balance a second stool.</p>
+
+<p>When they returned with laden pails to be emptied into the tall churn,
+the fire was aglow, the porridge ready, the younger children up and
+dressed in sombre suits, Davy in his first breeches, and all three stiff
+and uncomfortable in shoes and stockings, neighbourly Mrs. Griffith and
+her young daughter Cate having come upon the scene to set the afflicted
+and harassed widow free for the rest of the day.</p>
+
+<p>Owen Griffith was also there, and by the time breakfast was over and a
+clearance effected, Mrs. Edwards and Rhys had changed their garments and
+assumed the sable hooded-cloaks prescribed for mourners. Then the table
+was covered with a clean homespun linen cloth, and re-set with cold
+beef, cake, and cheese, for all comers, along with mugs to hold the
+customary draught of hot ale and <i>abelion</i>, the latter a spiced
+decoction of elderberries and herbs, chiefly rosemary, huge pitchers of
+which were kept piping hot on the hearth.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, Owen Griffith and a companion had improvised a table of
+planks, and a long bench in front of the house, piling up turf and
+stones as supports, a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> proceeding William watched with wondering
+interest. He may have puzzled where the mugs and platters came from, and
+who would sit at the long boards and consume all the beef, the piles of
+cake, and the great cheeses set out in halves, and what the two empty
+bowls were for in the middle of each table.</p>
+
+<p>At all events, Jonet wondered, and communicated her perplexity to David,
+who in turn referred to Rhys, to be answered curtly, 'Wait and see! I'm
+more puzzled to know what do bring Owen Griffith here, ordering about
+and as busy as if he was master.'</p>
+
+<p>The mother could have told that a distant cousinship between Griffith
+and the deceased sufficed for authority to make all needful arrangements
+in the absence of nearer kin, and that she was extremely grateful to him
+for his kindness all through the trying time.</p>
+
+<p>Very soon the other children had their questions answered, for guests,
+bidden or unsought, came trooping in from valley and mountain near and
+far, not by twos and threes only, but by dozens; relatives, friends, and
+mere acquaintances, for Edwards was a man held in high esteem. All were
+in their Sunday best, yet very few had so much as a bit of crape, a
+black kerchief, or a black pair of stockings. Their presence was
+supposed a sufficient token of respect.</p>
+
+<p>In succession as they came began, not merely a clatter of subdued voices
+discussing the sad accident&mdash;which might have overtaken any of them&mdash;but
+a general distribution and consumption of cheese, cake, and ale
+flavoured with the <i>abelion</i>, which custom may have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> rendered palatable,
+the simple provisions rapidly disappearing and being replaced as fresh
+arrivals brought fresh appetites, sharpened by journeying through the
+keen morning air, and eaten in primitive fashion, each man bringing his
+own pocket-knife, and converting his bread into a plate to be cut up and
+eaten with the meat upon it.</p>
+
+<p>And as the widow could not be reasonably expected to provide for so
+numerous and impromptu a party&mdash;<i>cwrw</i> being rather an expensive
+item&mdash;each partaker cast a sixpence or other coin into the bowl
+provided, a proceeding at which the younger children expanded their
+astonished eyes&mdash;all was so strange to them.</p>
+
+<p>Then the crowd, both within and without the house, made way for the
+bearers with their heavy burden, and for the black-cloaked widow and her
+two eldest orphans to follow.</p>
+
+<p>On account of their tender years, the roughness and distance of the road
+to be traversed, it had been decided to leave Jonet and William behind,
+in care of Ales.</p>
+
+<p>But silent William had had his wondering eyes and ears open the whole of
+the morning; and no sooner did it dawn on his infantile comprehension
+that his father was being carried away in the big box, and that his
+mother and brothers were going away with it, than he insisted on going
+likewise; clung to his mother's skirts, and held fast, neither amenable
+to persuasion nor command to release her and remain at home with
+obedient Jonet.</p>
+
+<p>No! He saw his mother and brothers in tears, and the bearers slowly
+moving away with the coffin in which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> his father was shut up, and in his
+baby-ignorance he concluded some great wrong was being done. He had been
+told by Ales that he would never see his father any more, and must have
+concluded the others were being taken away also; for when he was carried
+into the house by main force, he fought and struggled in Owen Griffith's
+strong arms, and cried with dogged persistence, 'Me will go! me shall
+go!'</p>
+
+<p>Even when shut up close in the bedroom, he kicked at the door and
+screamed, 'Let me out, let me out; I will go!' until, after a while, the
+noise ended in a sob and a scuffle, and busy Ales concluded he had
+wearied himself out and fallen asleep.</p>
+
+<p>When Ales, some quarter of an hour later, opened the door in compliance
+with Jonet's piteous entreaties, the room was deserted, and William
+nowhere to be found.</p>
+
+<p>Kicking at the hard door had hurt his toes, in spite of his new shoes,
+so he turned round to try his heels. On so doing he discovered that the
+small window-hole was wide open. In another minute he was across the
+room, scrambling up on to a box lying beneath the narrow aperture in the
+thick wall, a look of sudden triumph on his determined round face.</p>
+
+<p>He thrust out his head and beheld a long procession winding in and out
+of the rocky and uneven road, a multitude of high-crowned hats, some
+atop of women's linen caps, these rising above a medley of red and grey
+cloaks, striped petticoats and dark jackets crossed with small shawls,
+mingling with men's grey coats and blue ones; but it did not occur to
+the child, as it might strike<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span> us, that there was any incongruity in
+these vari-coloured garments on so solemn an occasion. All to him was
+new. He had never seen such a concourse of people before; his sole idea
+was that his mother and his brothers were being borne away after his
+father, and that he was bound to overtake and bring them back.</p>
+
+<p>The window was not much more than a yard from the ground outside, but it
+seemed far to so young a child. However, he managed to clamber up in
+some way, and to drop outside on his feet, and, after a sly glance round
+to see that the coast was clear, he trotted off as fast as his sturdy
+little legs would carry him, and out at a narrow gap in the stone wall,
+which did duty for a gateway; and as the descending procession moved but
+slowly, and there were occasional stoppages for change of bearers, he
+contrived to keep the rear of it in sight.</p>
+
+<p>Ere long his wood-soled shoes and stockings chafed and cramped his feet,
+and he sat down on a wayside stone to remove them. When he looked up,
+the last hat had disappeared, but, nothing daunted, he set off again at
+a run, carrying his shoes and stockings in his hands, and ere long
+caught sight of the nodding hats at a turn of the tortuous road.</p>
+
+<p>He had run nearly a mile, and was getting breathless and footsore, but
+he went panting forward, with no thought of giving in; but soon he began
+to call out for some one to stop, and tears ran coursing down his chubby
+cheeks. Still he trotted on for another half mile or so;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> but the pace
+became slower, the tears ran faster, and when the tail of the procession
+again disappeared he sobbed aloud, beset with fears.</p>
+
+<p>At this juncture a man leaning over a wall, who had followed the long
+train with his eyes, caught sight of the woe-begone child, in its black
+frock, limping painfully along, and asked what he was doing there, and
+what he was crying for.</p>
+
+<p>The answer was not very coherent or articulate, but the man was sharp as
+he was good-natured. In a very short time he was out in the road, with
+William Edwards mounted on a sleek ass, following in the wake of the
+mourners, who after a short distance on the level began to ascend the
+lofty hill on the brow of which, like an eagle on its eyrie, stood
+Eglwysilan's<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> ancient church, with the modest vicarage beside it,
+isolated from the widely scattered parishioners, and almost inaccessible
+in foul or wintry weather.</p>
+
+<p>Local tradition assigned to this time-worn edifice a date coeval with
+the apostles. But suppose we allow the apostles to have slept for nearly
+three hundred years, and assign to our British St. Helena (or Elian),
+the church-founding mother of Constantine, the credit of selecting the
+breezy site for a structure to which she stands sponsor, we still
+accredit the long-bodied, square-towered, and small-windowed church with
+a most venerable antiquity, and solid masonry which might make modern
+architects blush for shame.</p>
+
+<p>No sooner were adventurous William's fears of being<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> left behind set at
+rest by overtaking the slow pedestrians of the long train, than his
+spirits revived. He began to look about him, and to question the kind
+cottager, 'What's this?' or, 'What's that?'</p>
+
+<p>Of course he spoke in Welsh, as did all the people. I but render their
+language into English for my readers.</p>
+
+<p>From his elevated seat he could overlook low walls, and glancing down
+through the autumnal woods on his left, where the red ash-berries shone
+temptingly bright against the russet&mdash;leaved oak and yellowing beech,
+caught glimpses here and there of the shining river that had proved so
+treacherously cruel to his poor father. But neither red berries nor
+glancing river had such powerful attractions for him as the stupendous
+pile whence boomed the tolling bell&mdash;the 'church' of which he had heard
+so oft, but never seen.</p>
+
+<p>He had gone with his sister and brothers to the wooded glen which
+bounded their own farm on the north, there to help, or hinder, the
+gathering of ash-berries and acorns; but of human habitations he had
+seen nothing hitherto so large as his own home.</p>
+
+<p>He seemed absolutely fascinated by the grey lichen-covered church, and
+its low massive square tower, which he took for a huge chimney, and the
+nearer they drew to it the greater became his absorption.</p>
+
+<p>Being told, in answer to a query, 'People do go there to say prayers,'
+he asked again, 'Why for? We say prayers at home.' But though the man
+scratched<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> his tangled red locks, no adequate reply was forthcoming.</p>
+
+<p>At that moment there was a halt at the arched lych-gate. All the men
+took off their hats, for the white-robed vicar had come to lead the way
+into the church.</p>
+
+<p>The boy, who had no hat to remove, could only look on and listen in
+blank astonishment, understanding nothing of the solemn ceremony, but
+awed by the mysterious proceedings, and the unfamiliar aspect of the, to
+him, vast interior.</p>
+
+<p>It was not until he beheld the coffin lowered into the 'big hole' that
+he screamed out, and was not to be pacified, though Owen Griffith stole
+gently away from the grave-side and took him in his arms for the second
+time that day.</p>
+
+<p>The ceremony was soon over, and nothing heard but the sobbing of the
+mourners and the dropping of small coin into the shovel the sexton held
+forth for their reception; for thus were the fees of the vicar and
+himself paid by general contribution, and not merely by the bereaved
+relatives. It was an old custom, seldom better observed than on this
+occasion; for of the motley multitude drawn thither to show their esteem
+for the dead and their sympathy with his family, two-thirds were wofully
+poor, had travelled far, and lost a day's earnings to be there; but few
+so poor as to pass the sexton's spade without a tributary coin, however
+small. Set it, therefore, to their credit, and also that all were
+decently clad, and flaunted no rags, if they had no crape to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> mourn in.
+Custom is its own law, and respect is not shown by the colour of a coat.</p>
+
+<p>But what of the little fellow who had found his way thither, and created
+so much consternation by his unseemly interruption?</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTE:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> Or, Eglwys-elian.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>CHAPTER IV.</span> <span class="smaller">PAYING THE RENT.</span></h2>
+
+<p>''Deed to goodness! that boy's rightly named, for he's Will by name and
+will by nature!' said Ales when the child was brought home, showing no
+remorse for the trick he had played her, and little but indifference to
+the chiding of his mother or Rhys.</p>
+
+<p>'Me fought they was take you all away. Me said me would go. Me <i>did</i>
+go!' was all the excuse they could extract from him.</p>
+
+<p>He had made his return home triumphantly on the donkey of his stranger
+friend, a peat-cutter named Robert Jones, and was not at all disposed
+for humiliation. On the contrary, he was rather proud of his victory,
+and excited by his introduction to new scenes.</p>
+
+<p>The man, who was hospitably received and entertained, along with a
+numerous party of 'cousins,' for whose refection boiled beef and <i>cwrw
+da</i> had been again set out, was quite ready to recount where and how he
+had picked up the child, and expressed his surprise at the resolute
+endurance that had carried him so far on a stony, unknown road, no less
+than the strong affection<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span> which had overpowered the little fellow's
+natural fears and sense of fatigue or pain.</p>
+
+<p>He repeated with much humour some of the boy's queer questions and
+sayings, promising to give him another donkey-ride some day. And
+finally, when taking his departure, Robert Jones patted the boy's brown
+head, and called him 'a little hero!' as the child ran past with Jonet.</p>
+
+<p>This was not very wise, for the tone of admiration was ill calculated to
+repress the child's early developed strength of will, or to soothe the
+ruffled feelings of Rhys on finding his own superlative good conduct
+apparently unappreciated, and William's wilful disobedience thus
+applauded.</p>
+
+<p>His chagrin did not escape the notice of the man, who, going round the
+country as he did, selling peat and culm,<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a> had frequent opportunities
+for the study of human nature.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, look you,' cried he from the doorway, as he saw a scornful curl on
+the lip of Rhys, 'your little brother will be greater than any of you
+some day&mdash;head of the house perhaps.'</p>
+
+<p>'He never will. I'm eldest, and then there's Davy. <i>He's</i> a baby!' was
+Rhys' indignant protest.</p>
+
+<p>'A great good man, or a great bad one, Robert Jones?' called out Ales
+after the turf-cutter, an old acquaintance of hers. She had not forgiven
+William the fright he had caused by his escapade.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'Indeed, sure, and that depends on what you make of him among you,' the
+peat-cutter called back over his shoulder, ere he bestrode his donkey
+and went off.</p>
+
+<p>'The man is right, Jane Edwards,' said Owen Griffith then to the widow;
+'there do be great capacities for good or evil in Willem; he will need a
+firm hand to control him.'</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, sure,' she sighed deeply, her grey eyes filling with tears, 'and
+now the firm hand is gone.'</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, 'deed for sure! more's the pity!' was echoed round the board.</p>
+
+<p>Rhys alone made no remark; but he set his lips close over his teeth, and
+tightened his grip on his knife-handle, looking as if he thought <i>his</i>
+hand firm enough to control his baby-brother, and as if <i>he</i> meant to
+curb the wilful little one, whatever others might do. Ales saw it, if
+the mother did not.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile William, unaware of his eldest brother's paternal intentions,
+was seated under an apple-tree with Jonet, struggling for words to give
+expression to all the wonders he had seen and heard that day, the 'big
+house with the big chimney' more than all; whilst Davy, leaning
+listlessly against the tree trunk, as if fatigued with his long walk,
+crammed his mouth with bread and cheese, and smiled complacently at the
+youngster's first impressions of things familiarity had deprived of
+attraction for him, though over some he looked serious enough.</p>
+
+<p>Five miles away on the south-east from the mountain spur on which the
+Edwards' family had held a farm for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span> more than a century, lay, in a
+broad plain among barren hills, the grand old ruins of Caerphilly
+Castle, the ancient stronghold of the Despencers, and the very small
+straggling market town it overshadowed, a town which had either gone to
+ruin or ceased to grow, since the great castle had been despoiled and
+tenantless.</p>
+
+<p>It had ceased to be a borough in King Henry VIII.'s time, but still it
+clung to its fair and market, and thither came farmers and their wives
+with their produce; miners or their wives, and the servants from the few
+great houses thereabouts, as buyers. And there, too, came, at stated
+periods, with his string of pack-horses, the travelling collector of the
+hand-made goods of the district, such as knitted hosiery, linen checks,
+woollen shawls, flannels, blankets, all spun and woven in farms and
+cottages scattered among the mountains. He was the medium between the
+English merchant and the poor producer, who in the days when there were
+neither canals nor railroads, nor any facilities for swift conveyance of
+goods or people, could otherwise have found no market for his wares. As
+it was, the weaver might probably have obtained better prices at
+Cardiff, but the miles of extra distance had to be calculated in the
+reckoning.</p>
+
+<p>Early on the Thursday morning Mrs. Edwards, with a grey duffle<a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a> cloak
+over her short black linsey<a name="FNanchor_9_9" id="FNanchor_9_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a> gown, and a black, low-crowned man's hat
+above her white linen cap, her healthy face pale and worn with the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span>
+agitation of the week, stood by her egg and butter basket, debating
+whether she should go to the market alone, or yield to the entreaty of
+Rhys and take him along with her.</p>
+
+<p>It was likewise the rent-day. Mr. Pryse, the noble landowner's steward,
+condescendingly rode all the way from Cardiff to Caerphilly to meet his
+lord's tenantry at the little inn, 'The Cross Keys,' and woe betide the
+poor unfortunate who failed to put in an appearance, or to bring the
+full quota of coin.</p>
+
+<p>She was in no predicament of that kind, although she felt she might have
+been; but, hitherto, Edwards had always paid the rent himself, even if
+she had borne him company, and she rather shrank from her first
+encounter with the disagreeable agent.</p>
+
+<p>'You had better let me go, mother. Mr. Pryse will find that you are not
+quite alone, and may be more civil when he sees how big and strong I am,
+whatever,' urged Rhys.</p>
+
+<p>(Mr. Pryse was a little, wizened, cantankerous fellow, with a skin like
+shrivelled parchment.)</p>
+
+<p>Ales put in her word. ''Deed, mistress, you had best take the boy. A
+little stick is better than no stick in a fight.'</p>
+
+<p>Ales had settled the question with this last remark.</p>
+
+<p>'Well, perhaps it's best to be having a witness when you deal with queer
+folk,' assented her mistress; and Rhys had permission to scuffle off and
+slip on his black short-tailed jacket and breeches, so as to look his
+best and bravest. He was a sturdy, well-grown lad for his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span> years, with a
+firm chin and fearless grey eyes, and whether it was fancy or reality
+his mother thought him taller in his new clothes.</p>
+
+<p>He certainly was developing rapidly; for no sooner was the shaggy pony
+jogging along with its double load, Mrs. Edwards in front with her
+basket resting on a bag of wool she had combed and spun, than he begun
+to expatiate on the necessity there was now for him to learn how to go
+to market, and buy and sell, if he was to be a real help to her. He
+'could not be learning too much or too soon,' he said, and was not
+contradicted, though a week earlier she would have laughed at him.</p>
+
+<p>The road wound in and out among the hills, where the abundant waxen
+blossoms of the cross-leaved heath were fast losing their delicate blush
+and fading with the season, and the rosettes of the sundew had forgotten
+their dead florets a month or more. The very bracken was turning brown
+and husky, and the roadway was strewed with yellow and russet leaves
+that were whirled hither and thither by the wind or were trodden into
+the earth by unrelenting hoofs.</p>
+
+<p>For it was also the first October fair, and there was no lack of company
+by the way. Owen Griffith, farmer and weaver, had joined them early with
+a great pack of flannel across his mare; and from almost every fold of
+the hills came one or more on foot or horseback to swell the general
+stream, every one, male or female, knitting along the road. The grimy
+collier and the swart digger of tin and iron hailed each other by the
+way, and the widow had many a respectful salutation as they jogged<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span>
+along, and answered many an inquiry about the boy behind her.</p>
+
+<p>Her first business when they reached Caerphilly was to get over her
+ordeal with Mr. Pryse, Griffith kindly taking charge of her horse and
+commodities.</p>
+
+<p>The narrow entrance to the inn was crowded with tenants on their way to
+the important deputy's room or from it, but all were ready with natural
+politeness to make way for William Edwards' widow. Mr. Pryse might have
+taken a lesson from men of lesser degree.</p>
+
+<p>From the table by the window where he sat, with an inkhorn and papers
+before him, small piles of coin at his right hand, he looked up.</p>
+
+<p>Rhys had taken off his hat; the steward, to assert his superiority, kept
+his upon his head.</p>
+
+<p>'So I hear you're a widow, Mrs. Edwards,' was his abrupt salutation.
+'The farmer could not see his way home, I'm told, and so got drowned.
+Blind drunk, I suppose?' A supercilious lift of his narrow shoulders
+emphasised his brutal comment.</p>
+
+<p>Rhys flamed up. 'No, sir; my father <i>never</i> got drunk. He could not see
+for the mist, and the flood carried him away. If he had been drunk, sir,
+he could not have crossed the Rhonda ford.'</p>
+
+<p>If Mrs. Edwards had been shocked by the steward's unfeeling rudeness,
+now she feared her farm was in peril, and began to wish she had left
+Rhys outside.</p>
+
+<p>With half-shut eyes, Mr. Pryse scanned the impetuous boy from head to
+foot curiously. Ignoring the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> warm defence of a dead father, he drew his
+sinister brows together, and asked curtly&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'That your son?'</p>
+
+<p>''Deed, yes, sir.'</p>
+
+<p>'How old is he?'</p>
+
+<p>'Twelve last March, sir.'</p>
+
+<p>An unpleasant smile thinned the thin lips that asked again&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'Your eldest?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, sir.'</p>
+
+<p>'Humph! And do you expect to manage the farm with only <i>his</i> help?'</p>
+
+<p>'Not altogether, sir. I've'&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'What?' he interrupted. 'Come to give it up?'</p>
+
+<p>'<i>No</i>,' said the widow firmly. 'I have come to pay the rent. I can hire
+a man. But <i>I</i> shall be the farmer, please God.'</p>
+
+<p>She counted out the money on the table as she spoke, the fire in her
+eyes burning up the tears.</p>
+
+<p>'And what sort of a farmer will <i>you</i> make?' he replied with a sneer.
+'You'd better give up the holding at once.'</p>
+
+<p>'You'd better wait and see, sir. When I cannot pay the rent I may give
+in, not before. I am wanting the receipt, look you.'</p>
+
+<p>'Humph! Oh, ah, the receipt, sure!'</p>
+
+<p>Had he counted on her being so ignorant, or simple, or careless as to
+pay rent and take no receipt, his quill pen went squeaking over the
+paper so reluctantly? At all events he watched her narrowly through his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span>
+slits of eyes as she took it up and read it carefully over, before she
+folded it up and stowed it away in her needle-book for safe carriage in
+her capacious pocket.</p>
+
+<p>He was not quite so confident of her incapacity for management when she
+left with a brief 'Good-morning,' and was followed by her son, who put
+on his hat and said never a word. He was wise, for if he had said
+anything there would have been unpleasantness.</p>
+
+<p>So there would have been had he heard the growl that followed them.
+'Humph! the young cub's as hot and unmannerly as his pig-headed lout of
+a father! but he'll get his nails cut when the widow marries again,
+indeed will he.'</p>
+
+<p>'Mother, does Mr. Pryse ever cheat any one? I don't think he wanted you
+to have that receipt you had to be asking for,' whispered Rhys when they
+got outside. 'I felt as if I'd like to knock him down, 'deed I did.'</p>
+
+<p>'Hush, Rhys,' and the widow looked round, afraid of listeners; 'you must
+not say that. He's a very hard man, and nobody does be liking him much,
+but I never heard of his really cheating any one. You must be very
+careful not to offend him. Your poor father did it once, and he has owed
+us a grudge ever since.'</p>
+
+<p>'Then he is a bad man, and I shall hate him for the wicked words he said
+of father.'</p>
+
+<p>Owen Griffith was waiting, and brief was the widow's opportunity to
+impress on Rhys the sin and danger of fostering hatred. As brief was the
+influence on him.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span> Mr. Pryse, apart from the insult to his father's
+memory, had touched the sensitive nerve of his own sprouting
+self-sufficiency, and shown, so the boy thought, a tendency to overreach
+his mother; and, without any analysis of his own motives, Rhys had
+conceived on the spot an unconquerable aversion to the unprepossessing
+steward.</p>
+
+<p>When Owen Griffith's turn came, Mr. Pryse was, for him, unusually bland
+and gracious, much interested in his small holding and the welfare of
+his family, and <i>incidentally</i> interested in his near neighbours, the
+family so suddenly deprived of its head. But though he passed the
+weaving farmer through a very fine sieve, he got nothing for his pains
+that could be laid up against either the drowned man or the capable
+widow.</p>
+
+<p>So capable, that she had disposed of her wool, her butter and eggs, sold
+a quantity of oats from a sample, hired a trustworthy young man named
+Evan Evans for the farm, made her own purchases, called to see the
+rheumatic mother of Ales, who lived in a small cot built within the very
+ruins of the castle, exchanged messages and Christian sympathy with the
+old dame, and was refreshed and ready for her return home with Rhys long
+before Owen or his friends thought of stirring.</p>
+
+<p>And home they got whilst there was light to pick their way, though
+clouds had been gathering in the south-west, and the first drops of a
+heavy downpour caught them as they neared the farm. They were welcomed
+by the joyous shouts of the little ones, and the assurance of Ales that
+they had all of them been 'as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> good as gold,' and well deserved the
+gingerbread brought home for them. Even William, of whom there had been
+some doubts, accepted the 'going to market' as a common occurrence, and
+had given her very little trouble, though he had exacted a promise that
+she would take him some day to see 'the great big house, with the big
+chimney, that they called the church.'</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> Culm, the dust of hard coal, used for fuel when mixed with
+clay and peat.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> Duffle, made both in scarlet and grey, was a very thick,
+close-grained woollen cloth, its upper surface covered with pin-head
+curly knots. It was almost waterproof.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_9_9" id="Footnote_9_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> Linsey-woolsey, a mixture of linen and woollen, is still in
+use.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>CHAPTER V.</span> <span class="smaller">THE NEW INMATE.</span></h2>
+
+<p>The rain was still coming down with steady persistence when, two hours
+later, Evan Evans lifted the great wooden latch of Brookside Farm, and
+entered the large kitchen with a 'God save you' for greeting.</p>
+
+<p>Ales, who was giving the last stir to something bubbling in an iron pot
+on the fire, whence came a steaming savour of leeks, turned round
+sharply to see what sort of a young fellow had come into the house as an
+inmate, and seeing, returned his salutation, as did the two lads waiting
+for their supper.</p>
+
+<p>What she saw was a strong-limbed young man, about three or four and
+twenty, with a good-humoured smile upon his face, as if a drenched coat
+and muddy nether garments were quite minor discomforts. He carried a
+lighted lanthorn in one hand, and a bundle slung on a stick over his
+shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>'If you're Evan Evans,' said she, 'you'd best take off your coat, and
+sit down by the fire to get dry,' a corresponding smile on her face
+sufficing for a welcome, and indicating her content with the sample as
+presented.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>As if to ensure her good graces, his first act was to step across the
+floor, and with one strong brown hand lift from the chimney-hook the
+heavy broth-pot, on the handle of which the girl had just laid both of
+hers.</p>
+
+<p>'Good for you, Evan Evans; may you be always as ready,' said she,
+showing her firm white teeth, and hastening to ladle out the broth the
+boiled beef had supplied.</p>
+
+<p>'Always ready for a good supper,' was the prompt reply. 'One does not
+always get broth every day.'</p>
+
+<p>Meat was not often boiled for broth then on small farms. Indeed, was
+never cooked except on rare occasions.</p>
+
+<p>At that moment Mrs. Edwards came in from what we may call the 'dairy' in
+the rear.</p>
+
+<p>'I did not expect you to-night,' said she, 'but it is well you are
+here.'</p>
+
+<p>'Sure and indeed, ma'am, you would not have me come on a Friday, and I
+was not myself like to come on a Saturday, and I thought you would want
+me before the Monday, look you.'</p>
+
+<p>'Why not Saturday?' interrupted Rhys, waiting impatiently for his broth.</p>
+
+<p>'Sure and "Saturday's flitting is a short sitting" my Irish grandmother
+was used to say, and she was a wise woman,' answered the young man
+gravely.</p>
+
+<p>Superstition was so widespread and general, that no one uttered a word
+of doubt or dissent to either proposition, but Mrs. Edwards remarked,
+''Deed and it's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span> quite as well you came. We have lost a week, and it's
+time some of the roots was out of the ground. It will be soft for the
+digging after the rain.'</p>
+
+<p>'Do you be having any potatoes among your crops?' he asked then over his
+steaming bowl of thick broth.</p>
+
+<p>''Deed, no; Edwards' (a sigh) 'said they was only for the gentry to grow
+in their gardens.'</p>
+
+<p>'Then I would have you try them next year. The head man at Castella says
+they was the most profitable crop he had on the land. They was good for
+the cows and the hogs if he had any to spare from the family table. He
+was be going to plough half an acre of ground for them.'</p>
+
+<p>'Plough? What's that?' questioned Rhys, to whom the very word was
+unknown.</p>
+
+<p>Evan explained to more than one attentive listener.</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, well,' said Mrs. Edwards, when he had done. 'Where I was in
+England, every farmer did plough his fields. And my own father used to
+be saying that the laws King Howel the Good did be making nearly eight
+hundred years ago, would not allow any man to be a farmer unless he
+could make his own plough, as well as guide it. But there did be only
+wooden ploughs in those days, and they did get knocked to bits on the
+stony ground among the mountains of wild Wales, and they did get out of
+use, whatever. I did want to have a good strong plough here, but Edwards
+was always be saying the spade was good enough for him. His father and
+his grandfather before him<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> had dug every rood of the land with the
+spade, and what was good enough for them was good enough for him.'</p>
+
+<p>'Good enough's all very well where there's never a better,' thrust in
+go-ahead Ales, with the freedom of the time. 'You didn't be thinking
+your grandmother's distaff good enough for you when you bought that
+spinning-wheel.'</p>
+
+<p>Both Evan and Rhys looked up from their half-empty bowls across the
+table at Ales, as if struck by her pertinent shrewdness.</p>
+
+<p>'Indeed, Ales, I did not; nor did I think holes that let in the wind and
+weather along with the light good enough. But till the grandfather did
+die of rheumatics there could be no glass windows. And I did not think
+it good for the pigs to run loose, rooting up my garden and destroying
+what they could not eat, but there has never been a sty built to this
+day.'</p>
+
+<p>'And what's a sty?' asked Rhys.</p>
+
+<p>'A house for the hogs.'</p>
+
+<p>Rhys laughed. 'Why, mother, who ever did see pigs with a house of their
+own? All pigs run loose in the woods. Lewis did say to me he never saw
+any but ours shut up in a fold like sheep.'</p>
+
+<p>'Never mind Lewis. He has never gone far from Eglwysilan. If he had been
+in England as I was before I married, he would have been seeing
+pig-styes on every farm. But there be plenty in Wales, and Evan will set
+up one here very soon.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'Yes, indeed,' was the man's hearty response.</p>
+
+<p>There was some further talk over work to be done, and how it was to be
+done, before Evan followed Rhys to bed, neither having a word to say
+against overcrowding, although David was there before them.</p>
+
+<p>And then Mrs. Edwards and Ales, comparing notes, agreed that she had
+hired a very capable man.</p>
+
+<p>It might have been said with equal propriety that the widow had shown
+her own capability in the choice of a farm-servant who would live in
+close companionship with her fatherless sons.</p>
+
+<p>Over the board set forth with funeral meats she had named her want among
+the assembled relatives, and then had ensued a warm controversy on the
+merits of various men likely to be at the Caerphilly hirings.</p>
+
+<p>Some one had named Evan Evans. Thereupon arose a general outcry that he
+would ruin the farm with the notions he had picked up at Castella, where
+there was an English farm-bailiff. It was admitted that he was
+hard-working, honest, sober, and religious, but all these were as dust
+in the balance compared with the crime of departing from the old ways,
+and preferring new methods of husbandry.</p>
+
+<p>She had listened, making no comments. But she had hired the young fellow
+the more readily for those very detractions. She had not found the old
+ways pleasant or profitable. She meant to show Mr. Pryse what good
+farming could do for but indifferent land.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> And she counted on Evan's
+religious principles as warrants for the example he would set before her
+growing boys.</p>
+
+<p>The hiring was for the year, and could only be terminated by mutual
+agreement. At the same time it was renewable from year to year, and
+sometimes both men and maids remained with the same master or mistress
+half their lives. If any breach of contract occurred, the law was very
+strict and severe. A prison awaited the servant absent without leave, or
+wilfully refractory, and heavy fines the masters who ill-treated the
+servants so hired. Such cases were not frequent, but they did occur at
+intervals.</p>
+
+<p>Though the sky was clear, the rain was still dripping from the eaves,
+and had worn little runnels in the soil and between the grey stones on
+its way down hill to swell the noisy woodland brook, when Evan and the
+boys turned out of their close and darkened bedroom in the morning, and
+Rhys volunteered to show the former over the farm before the others were
+up.</p>
+
+<p>''Deed, no,' said the man, 'that do be your mother's place. She might
+not be liking us to make so free, whatever. We can make up the fire, and
+set on the porridge-pot for Ales, to lose no time. Where are the
+fire-balls kept?'</p>
+
+<p>This was a check to the boy's newly-born importance. Not choosing to
+wait upon the man, he ordered Davy to fetch the fire-balls, and marched
+out at the back in some dudgeon. Meanwhile, bidable Davy brought the
+fire-balls. Evan, all unconscious of the young master's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> wounded
+dignity, fanned the smouldering peat on the hearth to a glow, and had a
+clear fire under the black pot when Ales and her mistress came upon the
+scene, leaving Jonet and William still asleep.</p>
+
+<p>The morning ablutions of Evan and the two elder boys were performed in
+the open air, at a spring which gushed from the stony mountain-side into
+a natural water-worn basin; Mrs. Edwards and Ales in the nondescript
+apartment in the rear, there being little time or ceremony wasted in the
+operation.</p>
+
+<p>The rough-and-ready toilette completed, Ales went back to the kitchen;
+and the sun having just risen above the mountain-top to waken up bird
+and beast, and turn the lingering rain-drops into fairy gems, Mrs.
+Edwards herself led Evan over the primitive homestead, from the rude
+stabling and cowshed, where the fowls roosted overhead, to the
+dilapidated thing they called a barn, and the sodden farmyard, where a
+huge sow and her brood of piglings lay wallowing in the mire.</p>
+
+<p>Two years earlier the young man would have looked on all with
+complacency as the common state of things; but then he could only shake
+his head and coincide with his new mistress that there was room for
+improvements that would require time, energy, and some outlay. They had
+looked into the orchard, and at the stone fences, and, the survey over,
+came in at the front, where Mrs. Edwards had done her ineffectual best
+to copy an English garden for herbs and flowers, and to keep out pigs,
+poultry, and goats.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>By this time Ales and offended Rhys were back from milking, the two
+little ones were washed and dressed, and the porridge was ready for
+pouring out, quiet Davy having lent a hand wherever needed, without any
+fuss or assumption. He was always ready to fetch and carry at any one's
+bidding, and was seldom allowed to sit still. It was he who had brought
+water from the spring to wash the younger ones, and emptied it when
+used; he who had laid wooden bowls and spoons on the table and brought
+in the great brown pitcher of milk, and was lifting William to his seat
+at the table when his mother and Evan came in at the door. Just docile
+Davy, of whom nobody made much account either to praise or blame.</p>
+
+<p>Rhys, who had not yet recovered his composure, had already taken his
+seat at the table in silent displeasure, and took no note of their
+entrance, but both Jonet and William stared hard at the strange man, the
+former shyly, the latter with open-mouthed wonder, which he put into
+words.</p>
+
+<p>'Who's 'oo?' he wanted to know when Evan drew his stool to the table
+beside him.</p>
+
+<p>Being answered pleasantly, he rained childish questions thick and fast
+on the 'strange man,' all relative to his presence there, and was barely
+silenced when grace was said over the hot porridge. There had been so
+many strange men coming and going in the past week that he wondered if
+Evan had been left behind. His queries only ceased with a scalded mouth.</p>
+
+<p>'If you want to learn farming, Rhys, you had better<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span> come with Evan and
+me. We are going over the fields to settle what is best to be done,'
+said his mother when breakfast was over.</p>
+
+<p>Had his mother asked him to go along with <i>her</i> to settle what had best
+to be done, and how, he would have risen with alacrity to share her
+cares and counsels, but much as he had professed his desire to learn he
+did not want Evan Evans for a teacher. Had not his interest and
+curiosity been excited overnight, he might have lingered behind, so sore
+was he from the morning's rebuff. As it was he rose but sullenly to
+obey.</p>
+
+<p>'May I come?' asked Davy.</p>
+
+<p>''Deed, no. You will be wanted here. Get your knitting and mind Jonet
+and Willem.'</p>
+
+<p>The peremptory reply served for both Davy and Jonet, though the latter
+did put a pouting finger to her lips. But William had ideas and a will
+of his own.</p>
+
+<p>'Me go with 'oo!' 'Me must go!' 'Me <i>will</i> go!' 'Man, take me!' were his
+persistent iterations, while his sturdy bare legs and feet went
+pattering after his elders over the rain-washed stones, and he struggled
+with all his little might against the attempts of Rhys to force him
+back.</p>
+
+<p>Their wills were equally strong, but their strength was not. No doubt
+Rhys clutched the tender arms too tightly, for William screamed and
+cried out&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>''Oo hurt me; 'oo hurt me.'</p>
+
+<p>Evan, who had reached the gateway with Mrs.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> Edwards, turned back,
+saying pitifully, 'Don't be hurting the little man. If your mother do be
+willing to let him go, I will carry him on my shoulders, look you.'</p>
+
+<p>In another minute, triumphantly, masterful William was mounted on the
+low stone wall, on his way to the big man's shoulders, his mother
+smiling a passive consent, whilst Rhys bit his under lip and clenched
+his hands tightly in ill-concealed chagrin.</p>
+
+<p>It was the second time that morning Evan Evans, the hired man, had
+thwarted him, his father's first-born. Rhys, in his own opinion, had
+ceased to be a boy. He had quite decided that he was to be his mother's
+right-hand man, and that they would manage the farm between them, with
+underlings of course, and here was this great interloper come and
+thrusting him into the background.</p>
+
+<div class="center"><a name="i067.jpg" id="i067.jpg"></a><img src="images/i067.jpg" width='437' height='700' alt="MOUNTED ON THE LOW WALL, ON HIS WAY TO EVAN'S SHOULDERS" /></div>
+
+<p class="bold">MOUNTED ON THE LOW WALL, ON HIS WAY TO EVAN'S<br />SHOULDERS.&mdash;<i>See page 66.</i></p>
+
+<p>It was with no good will he followed over grass land and arable, over
+the fallow and on to the high moorland, where the cows ruminated among
+the tall grasses, and the sheep nibbled close to the ground the sweet
+morsels the cows had left, and the omnivorous goats browsed on heather
+or anything else in the way of vegetation. He heard them talk of the
+carrots and other roots to be dug up and housed at once, of the lime and
+farm manure to be laid on this field or that, and the suitable crops to
+be raised; but though he had a crude perception that Evan was a better
+farmer than his father, he sullenly resented the change in
+contemplation. All the more, perhaps, because his mother called for his
+attention, with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span> 'You hear this, Rhys?' 'Yes, Rhys; indeed, that will
+be best.'</p>
+
+<p>He gloomed, whilst William, released from his perch, ran hither and
+thither in high glee, chasing away the rooks and water-wagtails that
+were, unsuspectedly, doing the farmer good service.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>CHAPTER VI.</span> <span class="smaller">LOST.</span></h2>
+
+<p>It is difficult in these days of chemistry, steam, and mechanical
+contrivances for reducing labour&mdash;if not for dispensing with it
+altogether&mdash;to realise the difficulties attending the farmer in wild
+mountainous districts, far removed from the centres of civilisation, and
+unacquainted with the agricultural implements and appliances even then
+in use in more favoured districts. Places where there were no carts and
+no proper roads, and where the ascents and descents were too abrupt for
+anything but a biped or a mule; where every acre of the cultivated
+mountain or moorland had to be turned over with the spade, and every
+particle of manure laid on the land had to be carried thither in baskets
+strapped on human shoulders, or in panniers borne by ass or mule.</p>
+
+<p>Yet, such were the difficulties Mrs. Edwards and other Welsh farmers had
+to contend with even up to the present century, the moorland farmers of
+Cumberland and the North-West Riding of Yorkshire being somewhat
+similarly situated.</p>
+
+<p>The loss of a whole week's labour at the beginning of October was a
+serious detriment. Even Rhys knew that,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span> and finding that he was to take
+his instructions from his mother and not from Evan, he smothered his
+ill-humour and buckled to in earnest, though his brows contracted when a
+new form of labour was suggested to him.</p>
+
+<p>'Rhys, do you think you could cut down the bracken at the edge of the
+wood?' asked his mother dubiously.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, surely, I can cut it. Did I not help to reap the oats? But why
+should it be cut?'</p>
+
+<p>'Evan says it will save straw in the farmyard, and should be stacked for
+bedding for the pigs and cattle before it do be too late. And after it
+has served the beasts, it will be better for some of the land than
+lime.'</p>
+
+<p>''Deed, an' Evan do seem mighty clever! Houses and bedding for pigs
+indeed!'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, indeed, Rhys, and I am not too proud or too old to learn from him.
+Please God, he will be helping us to keep the farm in spite of Mr.
+Pryse.'</p>
+
+<p>Not another word of scorn fell from the boy's lips.</p>
+
+<p>Bidding Lewis, the shepherd's son, follow with Breint, the pony, to
+carry home the fern, as instructed by his mother, he, with a sickle over
+his arm, took his way across a grassy slope towards the steep woodland,
+stepping alongside the musical runnel the gushing hill-side spring sent,
+as overflow from a huge stone trough or basin, across the land and down
+the incline to join the tumbling brook from which the farm derived its
+name. The tawny brook itself had its source high up in the peaty moss on
+the mountain-top, and had worn, or found, a channel in a narrow cleft
+between precipitous rocks,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span> whose seamy sides barely afforded foothold
+for fir and larch. Yet widening and deepening into a picturesque glen,
+the ash and the elder hung out their red or purple-black berries over
+the noisy and tumbling watercourse, and the sturdy trunks of oak and
+beech uprose and spread out leafy arms to shade it from the too
+intrusive westering sun, dropping in a ripe acorn or a triangular nut
+quietly now and then, to float away and fructify in a future season far
+from the parent tree.</p>
+
+<p>It was otherwise when the wild north-east winds came rushing and roaring
+down the glen, for then ripe or unripe acorns and prickly mast were torn
+rudely away along with shoals of russet leaves and flung to the ground
+as offerings to the hogs and omnivorous goats, the brook coming in for
+its share, as well as the fringe of feathery ferns.</p>
+
+<p>The larger portion of the farm lands were on the steep but undulating
+uplands above the white homestead, the more fertile, including the
+orchard and the garden-plot, lying below.</p>
+
+<p>Bordered on either side by rough stone fences, and separating the grass
+land from these, a wider well-trodden path or road, which the flaky
+character of the stony ground converted into a natural succession of
+broad shallow steps, trended obliquely from the house to the level or
+main road such as it was. Across this, some two hundred yards farther
+north, the simple brook spread itself out and chafed at the
+stepping-stones which barred its passage to deeper woods and the great
+river that would swallow it up. Just as some thoughtless youth<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span> rushes
+from the safe shelter of a home too narrow for his ambition, and
+plunging into the vortex of the untried world is lost for ever.</p>
+
+<p>Some thirty or forty paces beyond the shallow brook stood the low
+cottage of Owen Griffith, whitewashed like the larger farm above. Then
+the lane took a turn and was crossed by intersecting roads perplexing to
+strange travellers.</p>
+
+<p>The outskirts of a flourishing and busy town now cover much of the land
+I have described so carefully. Even the lanes and highways have
+undergone changes since the Edwardses held Brookside Farm and traversed
+them.</p>
+
+<p>On that sunny October forenoon, while Rhys and Lewis cut down fern on
+the borders of the wood, and Evan plied his spade to turn over the
+stubble in good furrows higher up the hill, Mrs. Edwards midway, like a
+true Welsh farmer's wife, resolutely dug up the long-rooted, tenacious
+carrots, sparing not her toil, whilst Davy (again in petticoats) and
+even four-year-old Jonet freed them from the loosened earth, and cast
+them into wicker baskets for Ales to carry from the field to the barn,
+poised on her head. The basket was not light when full, but she stepped
+along with ease and grace, knitting as she went or came, only tucking
+the rapidly increasing stocking in her girdling apron-string whilst she
+emptied her load, or changed an empty basket for a full one.</p>
+
+<p>At first, imitative William insisted on helping, or hindering, Davy and
+Jonet, and for a while was as busy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> as the rest. Then he began to trot
+beside Ales as she went to and fro. After a time the little bare legs
+grew weary, and when the toilers rested on upturned baskets, to take
+their noontide meal of oaten cake and buttermilk, he was almost too
+sleepy to eat or drink, and, resting his sunny head against his mother's
+knee, fell off into a doze.</p>
+
+<p>Seeing that, Ales promptly lifted him up in her strong arms, and,
+carrying him to the farm, laid him on his mother's bed and left him
+there, as she thought, secure from harm.</p>
+
+<p>Once or twice, after emptying her baskets in the barn, she came down to
+the house and found him sleeping peacefully. So an hour and a half must
+have slipped by, perhaps more, when turning in to look at her charge,
+she found the room vacant.</p>
+
+<p>Still, she was beset by no apprehensions of ill. She made up the
+smouldering fire, and did one or two little household matters before she
+went back to the field with her empty basket, nothing doubting but she
+would find the boy with his mother. He knew his way about the farm.</p>
+
+<p>'Is not Willem with you?' she cried out as she neared the group in the
+field. 'He is not in bed.'</p>
+
+<p>'Not in bed?' echoed his mother, but without alarm. ''Deed then, he will
+have gone to Evan or to Rhys. That will be it. He will have met Lewis
+with the pony, and got a ride in one of the empty panniers.'</p>
+
+<p>'Sure, and that's most like.'</p>
+
+<p>But on her next journey to the barn she saw Lewis<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span> bringing up the pony
+laden with the panniers of bracken, but no child. Hastily ridding
+herself of her load, she waited until he came near. Then she called
+out&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'Have you seen Willem?'</p>
+
+<p>''Deed, no! Is he lost again?' came back in reply.</p>
+
+<p>'Lost? Name o' goodness, I hope not! Mistress will go distracted if he
+is. Empty your bracken, and keep a look-out; I'm off up the hill to
+Evan.'</p>
+
+<p>And away she sped at flying speed, straight as an arrow, over field and
+fallow. Her heart sank as she came in sight of Evan digging away as if
+his life depended on his day's labour, companioned only by feathered
+searchers for the worms he brought to light.</p>
+
+<p>'Evan!' she screamed, affrighted at last, 'have you seen Willem? We
+cannot find him anywhere, whatever.'</p>
+
+<p>Down went the man's spade, and over the freshly-turned ground he came
+bounding, in spite of his wooden-soled shoes. 'You don't mean to say the
+child is lost?' he cried.</p>
+
+<p>But she was already running back to her mistress, who took the alarm as
+soon as they came in sight, and clasping her hands in sudden terror,
+shrieked out, 'Oh, what is it? What has happened to my boy? Where is my
+darling Willem? Oh, if I lose him too, I shall go crazy!'</p>
+
+<p>Her only thought was that the child, in seeking Rhys, had fallen over a
+rock and been killed.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Her shriek, her unbidden tears, communicated her fright to Jonet and
+Davy, who clung to her skirts and cried for companionship, Jonet hardly
+knew why.</p>
+
+<p>There was a general rush to meet Rhys.</p>
+
+<p>'Sure, he will be in the orchard,' said he confidently.</p>
+
+<p>But he was not in the orchard, not anywhere on the farm.</p>
+
+<p>''Deed, and I think he will be for going to the church,' put in Davy.
+'He wanted to be going yesterday, look you!'</p>
+
+<p>The idea was instantly caught up. Evan and Rhys were off in search, and
+Lewis after them. Ales in vain endeavoured to persuade the mother to
+remain behind, whilst she went up to the moor, to see if he had strayed
+thither after the sheep. 'Don't fret,' she said, 'they are certain to be
+bringing him back soon. His little legs would not carry him far.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, Ales,' expostulated her mistress, 'how can you ask me to sit still
+while my darling Willem may be dead or in danger?'</p>
+
+<p>'Mother,' said Davy, with a gulp to swallow a sob, 'I will stay and take
+care of Jonet if you both go. You will be good with me, won't you,
+Jonet?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, indeed,' replied the little girl, as his arm stole protectingly
+round her shoulders, and he kissed her tear-stained face, 'I will be
+very good.'</p>
+
+<p>So, with strong injunctions not to go away, the two children were left
+alone in the house, with only a grey cat and a rough dog to bear them
+company.</p>
+
+<p>At first they sat still and waited expectantly, clinging<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span> to each other.
+Then the silence and solitude became oppressive. Presently Jonet began
+to cry for her missing playfellow, and when brave-hearted Davy failed to
+console her, his own tears began to fall. A dreadful fear began to creep
+over him lest William should be lost like his father, and they might
+never see him again. How long the time did seem to those two children
+left alone with a new fear!</p>
+
+<p>Ales was the first to return. She found the two seated on the stone
+stile in front that commanded a view of the steep path, anxiously and
+with beating hearts watching for some one to come.</p>
+
+<p>She brought them no good news, and was off again with stool and pail,
+for the cows were lowing to be milked. But her very coming had broken up
+the dreary silence and monotony. And when she went she left them milk
+and cake, and the consciousness she was not far away. Then, at her
+suggestion, Davy began to teach Jonet to knit, and in the occupation
+time passed less painfully.</p>
+
+<p>Ales came back with her milk-pails, and commended them for being good;
+made up the fire and set on the pot for supper. And so long as the
+setting sun shone redly in through door and windows they were passive,
+and she bustled about her household affairs, hiding her own fears.</p>
+
+<p>But the sun set, and dusk came down, yet never a foot came near the farm
+to say the boy was found.</p>
+
+<p>Then Evan came up for lanthorns to renew the search. He said he had been
+to the very church gates,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> but could find no trace of the child. Owen
+Griffith had left his loom, and his wife had kept watch to give each
+returning seeker news of the others. Mrs. Edwards was then at the
+weaver's in pitiable distress, and Rhys rushing hither and thither
+almost as wild.</p>
+
+<p>The two children, unwilling to go to bed, had fallen asleep huddled
+together in the chimney corner, when, between nine and ten o'clock,
+restless Ales thought she heard a shout, and before she could get to the
+door in burst Rhys, crying out, 'He is found! he is found!' and close at
+his heels came Evan with the poor wanderer in his arms, limp and
+helpless, his hair and his clothes saturated with heavy dew or mist, his
+little bare feet cut and bleeding, his lips and hands stained with the
+juice of purple berries.</p>
+
+<p>The woods and every possible nook and corner seemed to have been
+explored, when Evan chanced to question a young man upon the Merthyr
+Road. The stupid fellow stared vacantly, then blundered out, ''Deed, an'
+sure I did hear something about an hour ago up by the Druid Stones, but
+I took it for a stray lamb bleating for the ewe.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, sure, and it <i>might</i> be a child crying. I didn't go to see,' he
+replied stupidly to a second question.</p>
+
+<div class="center"><a name="i079.jpg" id="i079.jpg"></a><img src="images/i079.jpg" width='428' height='700' alt="LYING IN THE MIDST OF THE HOARY CIRCLE OF GREY STONE" /></div>
+
+<p class="bold">LYING IN THE MIDST OF THE HOARY CIRCLE OF GREY STONES.&mdash;<i>See page 78.</i></p>
+
+<p>Evan stopped to hear no more. Without seeking a regular path, he made
+his way through bush and bramble, over rock and hollow, and there in the
+very midst of the hoary circle of lichen-covered grey stones, which
+seemed to sentinel him round in upright double file, the light of the
+lanthorn revealed the child lying<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span> in a heap under the overhanging
+shadow of the great rocking-stone, his head pillowed on the arm that
+rested against its conical base. Had the child mistaken those grey
+stones for the upright slabs in the churchyard?</p>
+
+<p>The first rejoicing over, and the boy in bed, Rhys and Ales were both of
+opinion that he should be 'well whipped in the morning to teach him
+better than to put people in such frights.' And no doubt Evan was of the
+same mind, though he made no remark.</p>
+
+<p>But the tender-hearted mother could only thank God for his restoration,
+and say that he had punished himself quite sufficiently. He was not
+likely to stray again.</p>
+
+<p>Not for some time, for though all his garments were woollen, as were
+those of his elders, the damp, the exposure, no less than his childish
+terror, laid him up with a feverish illness that lasted for weeks.</p>
+
+<p>As well as could be made out from his disjointed confession, Davy's
+conjecture had been the true one.</p>
+
+<p>He had wakened, found himself alone, and had set off to 'see the big
+church,' nothing doubting he should find Robert Jones and his donkey to
+help him on his way. He had gone splashing through the shallow brook,
+and past Owen Griffith's unseen, but when he came to the bisecting roads
+his memory failed; he hesitated, turned to the right instead of the
+left, trudged on manfully northward, then took a by-path up-hill, as he
+fancied to the church, got bewildered among walls and winding ways, and
+out on the wild moor, stopping here and there to rest or gather
+blackberries, for he was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span> growing both weary and hungry. But he never
+felt the solitude oppressive whilst there was a bird or a stray sheep
+about. And it was not until the dusk began to gather and he sank utterly
+exhausted under the great rocking-stone, that his courage forsook him,
+and he cried piteously in his hungry loneliness and desolation, cried
+himself into the insensibility of sleep, with only night and the
+everlasting arms around him.</p>
+
+<p>In losing himself had he lost his childish craving to see once more that
+wonder of wonders&mdash;the big church?</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>CHAPTER VII.</span> <span class="smaller">THE YOUNG PLAGUE.</span></h2>
+
+<p>Thankful as was Mrs. Edwards, the mother, for the restoration of her
+missing darling; as a farmer, sorely behind with the autumnal
+field-work, the loss of half a day's labour to every useful hand upon
+the farm chafed her no less than it irritated Rhys. But when the child
+was absolutely ill, and required careful nursing or watching, she was
+torn with a double anxiety. The life of her child was at stake, and so
+was her possession of the farm. There was so much to be done before
+November set in, and so few hands to accomplish all. The outdoor work
+could not be neglected, or the live stock and the crops would suffer.
+Yet <i>some one must</i> remain indoors to watch the child, restless with
+fever. Davy was willing, but Davy was too young, and lacked strength to
+overcome resistance to nauseous draughts.</p>
+
+<p>She was at her wits' end; could not neglect her child, dared not neglect
+her farm.</p>
+
+<p>In this emergency, Rhys made a suggestion that Mrs. Griffith might
+perhaps be willing to spare her daughter Cate, a stout, red-haired,
+good-looking lass about his own<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span> age, who had already shown her active
+ability to make herself useful.</p>
+
+<p>After some slight hesitation on the part of the girl's mother, it was
+agreed that Cate should be at the farm early every morning, provided she
+returned home in the evenings before nightfall. Her temporary services
+were to be repaid with cheese made from the mixed milk of cows and ewes,
+or other farm produce, a customary mode of payment for casual service.</p>
+
+<p>Owen had suggested to his wife that the farm would be a good school for
+their girl. She would see things done there, both by Mrs. Edwards and
+Ales, that she had no chance of seeing at home, and she could have no
+better training for future service.</p>
+
+<p>The girl proved quite an acquisition. She was just as willing as Davy,
+and more efficient. When not wanted beside William, she was ready to
+relieve Ales at the churn or the scouring of pots and pails. Then she
+had a fairly good temper and persuasive ways that made her a capital
+nurse for a sick child with a resolute will.</p>
+
+<p>Jonet took to her amazingly. She brought some pieces of striped flannel,
+the refuse of her father's loom, and dressed up the little one's wooden
+doll like a real Welshwoman. And she brought green rushes from the
+brookside, and wove toy-baskets for her.</p>
+
+<p>Or, while Davy was away in the fields filling baskets with freshly-dug
+roots, or clearing the ground of stones (which many farmers in those
+days believed to <i>grow</i>, just as surely as weeds), and Jonet was ready
+to whimper<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span> for a playfellow, she would set down her knitting, or other
+work, to play at cat's cradle or push-pins; and, finding that Davy had
+tried to teach the little fingers to knit, she cast on stitches for a
+doll's belt, and, with a little patience on both sides, the feat was
+accomplished, and Jonet wonderfully proud of her new acquirement.</p>
+
+<p>By thus amusing the healthy child longing for a romp, she preserved
+quiet by the bedside of the sick one, whom an apothecary, brought all
+the way from Caerphilly, pronounced 'in a critical state.'</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Edwards, anxiously coming and going, saw what a capital nurse she
+made, and judged she was of better use there than in the fields. Rhys,
+too, would put his head in through the open window now and then to ask
+how his brother was getting on, and satisfied himself that he had shown
+his discernment in suggesting Cate to his mother.</p>
+
+<p>And when William began to recover, which was not until November had well
+set in, no one was more willing to admit her obligations to the girl
+than was Jane Edwards. Nay, she went so far as to send Rhys to light
+Cate home when the shortening of the days caused her to be kept after
+dark, and Rhys never raised any objection.</p>
+
+<p>She had helped him on her first coming to strip the apple and pear trees
+of their late fruit, and to separate such as were to be saved for the
+market from those to be thrown into the mash-tub and crushed for cider.
+And on the first day that William was allowed to sit at an open door, he
+watched her and Rhys preparing the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span> winter store of fire-balls, so
+willing was she to help in any way. Propped up in bed, he had seen
+Robert Jones once or twice lead a mule and an ass up the steep path with
+heavily-laden barrels slung across; but though he called faintly to the
+man through the open window, and was as usual inquisitive, he was little
+wiser when told they 'brought culm and clay for fire-balls.'</p>
+
+<p>Fire-balls were familiar things. Not so the culm or the clay, and to
+satisfy his persistent curiosity he was promised if he would keep quiet
+he should witness their conversion into the hard balls.</p>
+
+<p>A few yards from the house he saw on one side a great heap of black dust
+(the refuse of hard coal). This, barefooted Cate was riddling through a
+wire sieve (the very sieve Breint had brought safely home, though he
+lost the buyer), flinging away into a separate heap all that was too
+coarse to pass through the sieve. At a distance on the other side was
+laid a quantity of yellow clay, portions of which Rhys was moistening
+with water, beating and turning over with a spade, and when of the
+proper consistence adding, a spadeful at a time, the fine black dust
+Cate had sieved, to be again mixed and kneaded like dough, and finally
+worked with the hands into round hard balls, which he set aside to dry
+for fuel.</p>
+
+<p>The eagerness with which the pale little adventurer watched these grimy
+processes, his questions and quaint remarks, quite amused the two
+workers, but his searching interrogations speedily posed both of them;
+and when he wanted to know what <i>was</i> coal, and what was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span> clay, and why
+they mixed the two together to make them burn, he was greeted with fresh
+laughter, and an impatient, 'Oh, don't bother,' or its Welsh equivalent,
+from Rhys.</p>
+
+<p>But the little inquirer, who sat with his head on one side, resting it
+on his hand, was not contented with the put-off; and when Robert Jones
+came with a load of peat that afternoon, he was plied with the same
+questions.</p>
+
+<p>The man smiled. His own information did not go very far, but he did his
+best to reach infantile understanding; told him that the clay was a kind
+of earth dug from the river-side, and that coal grew underground, and
+was brought up in baskets out of a deep hole by a horse that was always
+walking round and round to wind them up to the top by a rope that wound
+round a thick wooden post.<a name="FNanchor_10_10" id="FNanchor_10_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a></p>
+
+<p>This was a puzzler for William. He wanted to be taken there and then to
+see the horse go round and round.</p>
+
+<p>Ales, coming at that moment to pay the man, hoping to put a check on the
+child's new notion, exclaimed&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'Name o' goodness, do you want the black man to carry you away down the
+dark pit-hole, where you would never see us any more whatever?'</p>
+
+<p>'Me don't fink they 'ood. They don't take man down,' replied the child
+sturdily; and at length the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span> 'man,' ready to go about his business,
+promised to take him to see the horse go round 'some day.'</p>
+
+<p>''Oo said 'oo 'ood take me to see church, an' 'oo didn't,' then said
+William in high dudgeon, and lapsed into sullen silence. In all his long
+illness he had not forgotten the church he had seen but once.</p>
+
+<p>'Never mind, Willem <i>fach</i>; if you are a good boy, perhaps mother will
+let you ride with her to church on Breint next Sunday,' said Rhys in a
+consolatory tone.</p>
+
+<p>'Sure?' asked William, his face brightening.</p>
+
+<p>'Not <i>sure</i>, but I will ask her.' And with that the little fellow seemed
+satisfied.</p>
+
+<p>The three youngsters were in bed when Rhys made his suggestion over the
+frugal supper-table. It brought on a sharp controversy, in which Ales
+joined very freely.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Edwards was undecided. She 'feared the child would not be strong
+enough to sit through the service after the long ride.'</p>
+
+<p>''Deed, there's no fear o' that,' put in Ales; 'but it's Jonet's turn to
+go to church, before a babe that can't make head or tail of a word
+that's said; and more like take Davy than either. There's no good of
+humouring children.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, I don't know what queer fancy he has got into that curious head
+of his,' argued Rhys; 'but I think it would be best to humour him this
+time, lest he should be setting off again, and'&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'Humour him, indeed! More like be giving him a good whipping,'
+interrupted Ales. 'There's no end to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span> his queer fancies. It's master
+over us all he will be soon, I'm thinking.'</p>
+
+<p>Evan had been silent. He agreed with Rhys. 'It is never too soon to
+learn the way to church,' said he. 'I will carry him there on my
+shoulders.'</p>
+
+<p>There was a sigh of relief from Mrs. Edwards. 'Ah, then,' she exclaimed,
+'Jonet and Davy can take turns on Breint. If it be fine,' she added. She
+was disinclined to be severe with William at any time, and after his
+long illness she felt unwilling to thwart him. Yet she had misgivings
+about indulging the obstinate self-will, 'so like his poor father's,'
+she told herself, with another sigh. Evan's proposal was hailed as a
+compromise that would, at least, content Rhys.</p>
+
+<p>Not altogether. He was not content that Evan should usurp his
+prerogative. <i>He</i> was the one to carry his brother if he must be
+carried. He considered his own proposal the fittest; but, perhaps,
+ashamed of his foolish jealousy, and remembering the boy's weight, kept
+his opinion to himself.</p>
+
+<p>November though it was, Sunday happened to be fine. Whatever mist there
+might be on the mountain-tops, there was no thick smoke to blacken it,
+and down in the valley it was clearing off.</p>
+
+<p>William and Jonet were in high glee. The little girl had not yet been to
+church, and he had led her to expect something marvellous. After illness
+children pick up their strength more rapidly than adults. The week had
+done wonders for the boy, who had been trotting indoors and out for two
+or three days.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He saw Jonet seated on a pillow in front of his mother on Breint, but
+was very much too much of a man to accept the proffered shoulders of
+Evan.</p>
+
+<p>'Me walk well as Davy and Rhys,' maintained he proudly, and trudged on
+sturdily so long as the road descended and had been clean washed by
+rain. But little legs cannot keep the pace with long ones, any more than
+can short purses with long ones, and after a time the weary little limbs
+were glad of a mount on the big broad shoulders. Yet even then he made
+the excuse of 'uncomfrable shoes an' 'tockings.'</p>
+
+<p>He did not talk much as they went, but cast his eyes from side to side,
+evidently taking note of wayside landmarks. Other people in their Sunday
+best were also on the road, and exchanged greetings in passing. He was
+apparently on the watch for Robert Jones, whose cottage of rough stone
+he recognised at a glance. He expected the 'man' and his donkey to be
+there also, and expressed his disappointment. But it was not until they
+passed under the shade of the dark firs that lined the roadside boundary
+of the vicar's glebe lands, when the lych-gate and the church, with its
+long body and massive square tower, were full in view, that he became
+demonstrative.</p>
+
+<p>Breint had been left at a small inn at the foot of the hill, and then
+William was pleased to dismount from his perch, and, with quite an air
+of patronising superiority, to take his sister by the hand as if to lead
+her up the hill, and over the stone stile to astonish her sight with all
+that had astonished him.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The bells were swinging and ringing over their heads, as they had been
+ringing for nearly half an hour, but they were early, and whilst Mrs.
+Edwards and Rhys walked together to their new grave, William stood still
+with his eyes fixed on the great church tower with childish awe and
+admiration.</p>
+
+<p>Presently he startled Evan with the strange questions: 'How did it get
+there? Did it grow?'</p>
+
+<p>His pointed finger showed to what it referred.</p>
+
+<p>'Grow, child? No. It was built.'</p>
+
+<p>'What is built?'</p>
+
+<p>'Men brought stones, look you, and put them together.'</p>
+
+<p>'How?'</p>
+
+<p>''Deed, William, you do be asking queer questions. I will, maybe, show
+you how it was built next week.'</p>
+
+<p>'Will you? Could me build big church if me was big man?'</p>
+
+<p>''Deed, and perhaps you might help.'</p>
+
+<p>'Then me <i>will</i>.'</p>
+
+<p>At that moment, to Evan's relief, Mrs. Edwards caught her little boy by
+the hand to lead him inside, Davy having taken charge of Jonet.</p>
+
+<p>Church, clergyman, congregation, service&mdash;all were strange to the girl.
+Her head turned this way and that; now with a smile as she recognised
+some familiar face; but ere long she wearied, and, not being allowed to
+talk, she fell asleep, and slept, with her head against her mother's
+cloak, throughout the sermon.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Not so William. The service was no more intelligible or interesting to
+him, but his unsatisfied, wide-awake eyes were everywhere exploring the
+sacred interior; his little mind lost in large wonder at the length of
+the building and the lofty roof overhead, so much larger to a child's
+imagination than its actuality. And how far his crude speculations went
+must remain a mystery to the end of time.</p>
+
+<p>The service over, Mrs. Edwards, holding Jonet by the hand, joined the
+stream of worshippers on their way to the porch, nothing doubting that
+she was followed by her boys. Once in the wide churchyard, dotted with
+upright slabs of stone, over which two magnificent yew-trees had stood
+sentinel for centuries, the congregation broke up into groups and family
+parties, to greet each other, and discuss alike the affairs of
+individuals, of the nation, and of the widespread parish&mdash;so widespread,
+indeed, that families whose ancestors lay all around lived too far apart
+for the meeting of kith and kin, except on the seventh day and on the
+common God's acre. Young people too&mdash;cousins and friends&mdash;clasped hands
+and blushed, or looked shyly at each other when only that was possible.
+The old vicar, too, when disrobed, would saunter from one group to
+another, shaking hands and inquiring about asthma, rheumatism, crops,
+and sweethearts, with genial impartiality. Here he would admonish one,
+there advise another; now his voice was low in condolence, anon cheery
+in congratulation; and, unless when there was some dispute over tithes,
+none ever turned towards him the cold shoulder.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He greeted the widow thus: 'Ah, Mrs. Edwards, I observe you have brought
+your whole family with you to-day. That is as it should be. "Train up a
+child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart
+from it."'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, sir,' she answered respectfully, 'I brought them all&mdash;Willem'&mdash;she
+looked round; 'Rhys, where is Willem?'</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, indeed, yes, where is the little fellow? I heard he had been very
+ill.'</p>
+
+<p>Another assent, another look round, the boy was nowhere within sight.
+But Evan was seen stalking towards the porch, and in a couple of minutes
+out he came leading the boy by the hand.</p>
+
+<p>He had found him standing in front of the communion-table, looking with
+awestruck eyes down the whole length of the church, but he suffered Evan
+to lead him away without demur.</p>
+
+<p>By that time, however, the vicar had gone, and Rhys, who had been round
+the church to look for the absentee, came back cross and ill-tempered.
+He had promised Cate to walk home along with her and her father, and had
+not been too well pleased to see them pass out over the stile beside the
+lych-gate, whilst he was still seeking what he could not find.</p>
+
+<p>'Where had you got to, you young plague?' he cried, with a frown on his
+face, taking the boy by the shoulders and shaking him angrily. 'You are
+always running off somewhere. But I'll thrash you if you do it again.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The mother interposed, but the harmony of the hour and the peace of the
+sacred place were alike disturbed, and Rhys marched off sullenly in
+advance, hardly caring whether he overtook the weaver and his daughter
+in his ill-humour.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTE:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_10_10" id="Footnote_10_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> This was the old method of drawing coal and pitmen to the
+surface, until superseded by machinery. Wells and mills were similarly
+worked. And still horses are so employed to draw up yachts on the
+sea-shore, the rope passing round a block.</p></div></div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>CHAPTER VIII.</span> <span class="smaller">THE DAY OF SMALL THINGS.</span></h2>
+
+<p>Evan was one of those capable individuals, who, through making good use
+of eyes and ears, can turn their hands readily to anything. In those
+days, before the 'division of labour' had been formulated into a creed,
+the class was more common, and still in remote country places
+individuals of the type may be found. In addition to his field-work he
+had helped the shepherd to mend the stone fence of his sheepfold, and
+had made the ragged roof of the cattle-shed wind and weather proof with
+the heather Rhys had cut down. He had yet to demonstrate his 'all-round'
+faculty in the performance of a promise made, in the first place, to
+Mrs. Edwards, and secondly, to little William.</p>
+
+<p>It was quite a common thing in Wales, as it is in Ireland to this day,
+for the pigs to wander over the farm, or out in the roads, poking their
+snouts into the proprietor's kitchen as a matter of course, and making
+free with root-crops meant for human beings. But as it happened that
+Mrs. Edwards and Evan had experience of a better state of things, they
+were agreed as to its adoption.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Consequently, at the beginning of the week, William, who had begun to
+follow Evan about like a small shadow, was delighted to watch him and
+Lewis clear away a large space among the outbuildings, and Robert Jones
+came two or three times with loads of rough stones from a local quarry,
+which his two patient beasts drew on the singular sleds or sledges that
+did duty for wheeled carts in those mountain regions.</p>
+
+<p>But it was the process of piling and fitting these loose and shapeless
+stones on one another, so as to bind together in a firm and compact wall
+without cement, that kept William dancing with excitement unfelt by
+either passive Davy or Jonet, to whom a stitch more or less in their
+knitting appeared of vastly more importance than the raising of a common
+wall. It might suit William to caper about, or to stagger under a
+voluntary load of stone, and fancy he was helping, it did not much
+interest them.</p>
+
+<p>Yet these children were no blinder than the world at large to 'the day
+of small things.'</p>
+
+<p>But when they noticed the rising walls shaping into two adjoining square
+enclosures with little doorways, across which he placed long, flat
+pieces of wood to support the upper courses of stone, and beheld a
+conical roof rise over each in genuine Welsh form, and learned that the
+two small houses were for the pigs to live in, Davy himself set up an
+exclamation of surprise, as Rhys had done before him. And, no doubt,
+Evan would have been equally surprised had he been told that the beehive
+form was as ancient as the habitations of those<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span> early British ancestors
+who fled to the Cambrian mountains for refuge from the Roman and Saxon
+invaders.</p>
+
+<p>Astonishment was exhausted when Williams, the Eglwysilan carpenter, on
+the Wednesday, brought a couple of stout wooden troughs and gates, for
+by that time each conical sty had been supplied with a small walled
+forecourt of its own, and Evan had covered the earthen floors with a
+thick carpet of dry fern for the pigs to lie upon. And whilst the man
+was at work fixing up the gates, he made a broom of ling, and began
+scrubbing the dirty old sow vigorously, to make her fit for her clean
+abode. The pigs grunted and the children laughed. So did Williams, the
+carpenter, to whom pig-scrubbing was a novelty. And so did Rhys, who
+came up the yard at the time, his lip curling with fine scorn.</p>
+
+<p>But Ales, who had lived with her mistress long enough to imbibe her
+advanced notions of cleanliness, and had, besides, a natural vein of
+good sense in her composition, called out from the unshuttered dairy
+window, where she stood drawing a knife through and through the
+newly-churned butter to remove accidental cow-hairs before making up:
+'Them as likes good bacon should be caring for the swine. There's fools
+as would rather be sticking in the mud than mending the roads.'</p>
+
+<p>Having delivered this oracular rebuke to the scorners, she resumed her
+butter-making with renewed energy, none the less for the swift glance
+and smile of approval she had seen on Evan's quickly upturned face.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She and Evan were becoming as good friends as he and William, and he did
+not affect to despise an additional friend on the hearth where Rhys was
+silently hostile. Beyond the bounds of the farm he felt he could defend
+himself, if necessary.</p>
+
+<p>But it would be as easy to defend oneself from a fog as from the
+whisperings of envy or the shrugs and jeers of ignorance.</p>
+
+<p>Already was the voice of prophecy upraised among the Sunday gossips that
+Evan Evans would bring ruin on Brookside Farm with his foolish new ways.</p>
+
+<p>The very carpenter who had taken the order for the woodwork of the new
+sties had tuned saw and plane to laughter, and hammered down his
+conviction that 'Mrs. Edwards would be finding out the folly too late.'
+And listening lag-behinds shook their shock-heads and fell back on the
+old Welsh proverb: 'Ah, a widow's goods will soon be gone.'</p>
+
+<p>When these whisperings reached the widow in the guise of advice from
+well-meaning cousins in all degrees of affinity, she put them down with
+a short, decisive answer: 'Look you, I do have my ways, you do be having
+yours. Keep your own spade for your own farm.'</p>
+
+<p>She wondered how the petty details of new management had reached so many
+ears, and gave Lewis a sharp hint not to gossip about what did not
+concern him. But she never suspected Rhys of dropping the word-seeds
+that rose up around them as ill weeds of speech and thought.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She had seen Rhys kick over wantonly a miniature wall that William was
+attempting to 'build' across the threshold with Evan's refuse stone
+chippings, and she had rebuked him sharply when he flung out angrily the
+small collection the child had brought indoors to 'build' with&mdash;just
+such a heap as a modern boy's box of bricks&mdash;not taking his pretence of
+'a litter' as an excuse. She had gone so far as to insist on the
+restoration of the 'poor darling's playthings'; but just as she failed
+to hear him delegate to Davy the task of picking up the scattered
+treasures William was crying for, so she failed to suspect her eldest
+born of any ungenerous feeling towards Evan, or any unworthy comment on
+private affairs to strangers.</p>
+
+<p>So long as roads were passable, and skies at all propitious, Mrs.
+Edwards was certain to ride to Caerphilly market, companioned by Rhys,
+less for protection than for his instruction. When Aquarius was reckless
+with his water-pot, Evan alone bestrode Breint, and seldom failed to
+make a good market.</p>
+
+<p>Equally, when Sundays were fine, Mrs. Edwards went to church, and with
+her Rhys and one of the younger ones; Evan's shoulders being always at
+the service of William rather than disappoint the boy. Yet, when the
+broken weather kept the house-mother and children from Sunday service,
+Ales was prompt and ready to accompany Rhys and Evan, even when the
+morning mist became a drizzle or a blinding fog. Umbrellas were unknown,
+and, therefore, unmissed. Cased in her thick, dark-blue cloak, its large
+hood drawn over her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span> low-crowned, black-felt man's hat, and the white
+linen cap under that, she seemed to heed the weather as little as her
+companions in their heavy coats, and generally came back, after her long
+barefooted walk, as rosy and bright as if the sun had been shining
+overhead, and the pathway of velvet sward.</p>
+
+<p>If Rhys started with them, he had a trick of deserting them, and joining
+Owen Griffith and Cate. But he was so far his own master, and, as they
+made no complaint, Mrs. Edwards had no suspicion of his defection, or of
+an intimacy so close as to have become confidential.</p>
+
+<p>And, although Owen had been one of the first to follow Mrs. Edwards'
+lead in the matter of whitewashing and window-glazing, and had been a
+very good friend and adviser to the widow in her hour of sorest need,
+and would have been the first to rise in her defence, neither his wife,
+nor Cate, nor it may be himself, was above the bird-like propensity to
+pick up stray crumbs of confidence, or to drop them for other
+well-meaning, bird-like chatterers to pick up. So it came about that
+little was done on the farm that was not discussed half over the parish.</p>
+
+<p>Yet, notwithstanding proverb or prophecy, the widow's goods were in no
+danger from unthrift.</p>
+
+<p>Whether rain or fair, whosoever went to church or stayed at home,&mdash;and
+as the winter advanced the roads became impassable,&mdash;no sooner was the
+kitchen cleared after the simple dinner, than the big Welsh Bible was
+laid reverently upon the table, and either Mrs. Edwards<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span> or Rhys read a
+chapter or two aloud, she venturing to expound the text to immature
+understandings.</p>
+
+<p>Theologians might have smiled, or shaken their wise heads over her
+expositions, but she was a clear-headed woman, and seldom dived below
+her depth.</p>
+
+<p>She never allowed anything to break into this Sunday custom. It was a
+family bond drawing them all closer together; even the youngest bringing
+their low wooden stools nearer, and listening with attention not common
+where books and other objects of interest are many.</p>
+
+<p>In the wet and snowy winter months, when outdoor labour was restricted
+and the days short, indoor work was at its busiest. Doors would be
+closed to keep out the cold winds, Evan would bring fresh squares of
+peat and fire-balls to keep the hearth aglow. He would take the place of
+Ales at the churn, or would hang up the big porridge-pot, or (if
+cheese-making was about, though there was little cheese made in the
+winter) the great whey-pot, with hearty goodwill to help her. Then a
+candle would be alight, and whilst the cat and dog lay basking in front
+of the fire, all, down to the youngest, would have some useful or
+profitable occupation.</p>
+
+<p>It was then Mrs. Edwards' spinning-wheel went round the swiftest, and
+sang its song of industry the loudest.</p>
+
+<p>In former days her husband had combed the wool, and was teaching Rhys
+how to fling the tufts of greasy and matted wool over the heated iron
+combs set in an upright staff, and to draw them out like the long locks
+of a woman's hair. She had always sorted her own fleeces. We are all
+familiar with the sign of 'The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span> Golden Fleece.' Well, just so the fleece
+of a sheep hangs together after it is sheared away, but in every fleece
+are several different qualities of wool, and the sorting and separating
+those qualities calls for a discriminating touch. This continued to be
+her task, though Evan took the wool-combing in hand, Rhys having an
+occasional turn with the coarser sorts.</p>
+
+<p>Ales, in generous rivalry with her mistress, having no second
+spinning-wheel, took up her distaff, as did half the women in the
+Principality, and set her spindle dancing on the floor as she drew out
+her thread of wool or linen.</p>
+
+<p>Knitting was taken up by any one of them when not otherwise employed.</p>
+
+<p>Thus Rhys plied his knitting-pins with ease and certainty, and the long
+blue or black woollen stockings grew under his fingers, whilst he
+proudly exercised his dead father's function, and taught his sister and
+brothers to read.</p>
+
+<p>It was a tedious occupation; and he might not have taken it up from
+choice, or accepted the office willingly, but the monotonous drawl of
+the learners sounded an undertone to the musical hum of his mother's
+wheel, and set his heart aglow with the feeling that, however and
+wherever Evan had superseded him, in <i>that</i> at least <i>he</i> represented
+his dead father, and was, in his own opinion, the head of the house,
+having authority over the younger ones.</p>
+
+<p>It made him more patient with them than he otherwise might have been.
+And it kept under his reluctance<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span> to teach little William his letters,
+when the child, with a laudable desire to look big and do what Davy and
+Jonet did, insisted on an introduction to the painted characters on his
+sister's battledore.<a name="FNanchor_11_11" id="FNanchor_11_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a></p>
+
+<p>'Me tree years old,' Willie had pleaded, when Rhys asserted that he was
+too young to learn, and when that did not serve, 'Me ask Evan, Evan
+teach me,' was quite sufficient. Rhys drew his dark brows together, but
+he put down his knitting and pointed to the letters without another word
+of objection.</p>
+
+<p>Having thus, as it were, compelled his brother to teach him as a favour,
+he stuck to his self-imposed task with unflagging determination, as if
+he had something to master that must be mastered. And, perhaps, not the
+less persistently because, with all a sharp child's acute perception, he
+saw he was having his own way in spite of Rhys. Having his own way also
+in being free to build walls and houses on the great chest under the
+window with his accumulating bits of stone.</p>
+
+<p>That is, until Ales came at an early hour and swept his building
+materials into a corner, and swept him and Jonet off to bed with equal
+promptitude, barely waiting whilst they said their simple prayers.</p>
+
+<p>Work (the knitting, spinning, and wool-combing) did not cease until the
+general supper-time, about eight o'clock; but conversation lightened it,
+the distance<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span> between mistress and servants being scarcely felt or
+perceptible, though one directed and the others obeyed.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes Evan might have occasion to look after a sick beast, or Ales
+to prepare a warm mash, or the shepherd might come in to report the
+condition of his flock; but so, with little variation, went on the
+routine of the farm, until renewing spring brought fresh activities and
+outdoor occupations.</p>
+
+<p>Spring, too, brought wizened Mr. Pryse, the agent, intrusively prying
+round the farm, his half-shut eyes scanning homestead and tillage with
+eager craving to discover signs of the mismanagement over which rumour
+had been busy.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTE:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_11_11" id="Footnote_11_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> An oblong board about ten inches long by eight wide, on
+which the alphabets and simple syllables were painted. It was furnished
+with a handle. In many cases the letters were printed and covered with a
+transparent slice of horn. It was then called a hornbook.</p></div></div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>CHAPTER IX.</span> <span class="smaller">THE BAFFLED AGENT.</span></h2>
+
+<p>Mr. Pryse mounted his horse and trotted away from the farm, biting his
+long nails as he went in sheer vexation. His survey had not been as
+satisfactory to himself as he had anticipated. The land was in good
+cultivation, and every one was at work upon it. In one brown field lime
+lay in round, white heaps; compost, from the farmyard, showed in dark
+patches, ready for distribution on the grass land. In one field Evan was
+sowing oats; in another plot, where the spade had turned over the ground
+in well-defined furrows, Rhys was dibbling holes for planting, and Davy
+followed, dropping in something he carried in a small basket, which
+would have baffled the sharp optics of the observer, had he not come
+across Ales, besides a heap of seed potatoes, cutting them up into
+pieces where the eyes were beginning to shoot, and seen Davy bring his
+empty basket for a fresh supply.</p>
+
+<p>'Mrs. Edwards do be in the house, sir,' said the young woman, as a hint
+that his inquisitorial observation was unpleasant; and, after a sneer at
+what he called 'experimental farming,' the hint had been taken.</p>
+
+<p>He had already been on to the moorlands to inspect<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span> sheep and goats, and
+put the shepherd through the fine sieve, and had come back over
+newly-sown crops, or springing shoots of green ones, heedless where the
+hoofs of his horse might fall. Had he been lord of the land in full
+possession, he could scarcely have been more indifferent; had he been
+tenant, he might have been more careful. As he neared the homestead, and
+saw barn and outbuildings in good repair, where he had expected
+dilapidation, he pressed his thin lips close together, but when he came
+upon the newly-erected sties, the thin lips spread, and made an abortive
+attempt to curl.</p>
+
+<p>'So that is how you propose to carry on your farm, is it? Aping the
+gentry!' he said, with a sneer, addressing Mrs. Edwards as he
+dismounted, the sound of hoof-beats having brought her to the dairy
+door. 'Do you imagine it will pay <i>you</i> to house your hogs? You will be
+for putting your goats into limbo next.'</p>
+
+<div class="center"><a name="i107.jpg" id="i107.jpg"></a><img src="images/i107.jpg" width='423' height='700' alt="'SO THAT IS HOW YOU PROPOSE TO CARRY ON YOUR FARM?' HE
+SAID, WITH A SNEER" /></div>
+
+<p class="bold">'SO THAT IS HOW YOU PROPOSE TO CARRY ON YOUR FARM?'<br />HE
+SAID, WITH A SNEER.&mdash;<i>See page 106.</i></p>
+
+<p>''Deed, and I wish I could,' was her response. 'They do so much damage
+to the trees and thatch.'</p>
+
+<p>'Ugh! And pray where did <i>you</i> see hogs so accommodated? Not in the Vale
+of Glamorgan, I know. We don't house pigs as snugly as our labourers.'</p>
+
+<p>'Sure, sir, it was in England, when I was in service there. And at
+Castella and Llantwit. But, perhaps, sir, you will be coming in and have
+a glass of cider and a bite of bread and cheese?'</p>
+
+<p>He looked snappish enough to take a bite at her&mdash;or her farm&mdash;as he
+answered: 'England, indeed! Surely<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span> Welsh ways are best for Welsh
+people. You will not find English ones prosper here.'</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, he followed her into the house, noticing as he went that
+the dairy had been enclosed and partitioned off close to the jamb of the
+outer door, and was shut in by its own door on the left, so as to
+preserve it from the dust of traffic across, and from the open storage
+on the right.</p>
+
+<p>'Is that another of your English ways?' he asked, as he passed on.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, sir.'</p>
+
+<p>'Humph! And your wheel, and your glass windows, and your potatoes? You
+will not find many imitators, Mrs. Edwards.'</p>
+
+<p>''Deed, sir, and I don't be looking for imitators, whatever; unless,
+perhaps, my children and my servants may be for teaching theirs, as I do
+be teaching them.'</p>
+
+<p>She had spread a clean, homespun linen cloth on the table under the
+cheese and the jug of cider, even though she disliked the agent and
+suspected his errand. Private feeling must not interfere with
+hospitality.</p>
+
+<p>He, for his part, accepted her attentions as a right, making as free
+with the cheese and bread and cider as if they had been ordered at an
+inn, with the relishing consciousness they would not have to be paid
+for.</p>
+
+<p>'Perhaps,' said he, after a good draught of the cider, 'you learned to
+make <i>that</i> in England too?' the old ugly smile on his thin lips.</p>
+
+<p>'Partly, sir. In Herefordshire.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Narrowed as were the slits between his eyelids, nothing escaped his
+roving eyes.</p>
+
+<p>'What's that?' he ejaculated, pointing with his riding whip, as he rose
+to depart, to a rudely-constructed tower William was raising on the oak
+chest with his stone chips. The boy had backed into a corner in front of
+his sister Jonet, as if he recognised a foe in the stranger. Shyness he
+had none.</p>
+
+<p>His mother explained. 'Willem's building a Tower of Babil.'</p>
+
+<p>'Humph! If he can do that, he might be set to something useful. There,'
+said Mr. Pryse, 'that will find him employment,' and, with a stroke of
+his whip, he swept down the boy's tower, a malicious chuckle shaking his
+skinny throat as he strode out of the kitchen to mount his horse.</p>
+
+<p>As he rode away he heard a boy's passionate scream behind him, and felt
+the sharp pelting of a couple of small stones between his shoulders. He
+turned round in his saddle, and shook his whip-hand at the child, who,
+with face aflame, cried after him&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="center"><a name="i111.jpg" id="i111.jpg"></a><img src="images/i111.jpg" width='431' height='700' alt="HE TURNED AND SHOOK HIS WHIP-HAND AT THE CHILD" /></div>
+
+<p class="bold">HE TURNED AND SHOOK HIS WHIP-HAND AT THE CHILD.&mdash;<i>See
+page 110.</i></p>
+
+<p>'You bad man! bad man, you!'</p>
+
+<p>But he only chuckled, as if the incident amused him.</p>
+
+<p>His satisfaction was but temporary, and before he had well reached the
+level he began biting his nails with vexation, for he saw only signs of
+improved husbandry, nothing on which he could pounce as betokening ruin.</p>
+
+<p>After a few days came a more welcome visitor to the farm, in the guise
+of a travelling packman, with his string of mules, on his rounds to
+collect the stockings,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span> flannels, blankets, and linseys, knitted and
+woven in the farms and cottages scattered among the mountains or grouped
+in villages. For these he was willing to pay in coin, but he preferred
+to exchange for the English goods with which his beasts were laden, not
+so much of ribbon and laces, gaily-coloured gown-pieces, or cheap
+trinkets, as of useful hardware, knives, forks, spoons, crockery, pots
+and pans, needles, pins, tapes, and buttons; such goods as were in
+general demand for household use. Very rarely did he display any more
+gorgeous drapery than a silken neckerchief, or a bright ribbon for a
+bow. The Welsh still clung to their national costume, and, with few
+exceptions, were clothed entirely in woollen of native growth and
+manufacture. Still he carried hats with him, and the flannels or duffle
+collected in one part he could dispose of elsewhere.</p>
+
+<p>The jingling bells on his leading mule proclaimed his arrival. There was
+a general rush to surround him and inspect his wares, the children
+crowding in with the rest, and the clack of tongues was indescribable.</p>
+
+<p>His periodical visits were the great events of the year. The first duty
+was that of hospitality. Oaten bread and cheese and milk were set before
+him, and the winter's pile of knitted stockings and mittens brought out
+whilst he refreshed. These, as the man knew of old, had to be examined,
+priced, and paid for before Mrs. Edwards would allow one of his packs or
+panniers to be unloaded. Then ensued the bargaining for bright-coloured
+mugs and bowls; there was no need of teacups and saucers, for no one
+drank tea. It was almost an unknown luxury there.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> Jonet and William
+were favoured with a mug apiece, adorned with waves of bright blue on a
+yellow ground. Rhys had a new hat. Davy plucked at his mother's skirts
+and reminded her that he was to be finally breeched when the packman
+came round, and he was not disappointed.</p>
+
+<p>Something was wanted and bought for house and everybody.</p>
+
+<p>Ales, who had smartened herself up of late, invested in a
+bright-coloured cotton kerchief or shawl to be worn crossed over her
+short jacket, and a stout comb to keep her tangled locks in order; the
+need for which she learned by surveying her own good looks in a
+red-framed looking-glass Evan had given to her&mdash;a glass not larger than
+his own right hand, but it was better as a mirror than the broken water
+under the spring, and might be taken as an earnest of his especial
+goodwill.</p>
+
+<p>The ensuing rent was paid duly; and, in spite of prophecies and
+forecasts, it was as duly paid in succeeding years.</p>
+
+<p>But Mr. Pryse grew no more civil; indeed, he seemed ever on the watch
+for some pretext to turn the widow and her children off the farm she had
+done so much to improve. He had never forgiven Edwards for saying of
+him, 'he was too grasping to be altogether honest,' and, when the farmer
+was drowned, rejoiced as only an evil-minded curmudgeon could do.</p>
+
+<p>It was no satisfaction to him, as years went by, to see one whitewashed
+cottage after another stand out like a pearl among emerald fields and
+foliage, and know whose<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span> house had been the model. Nor could he hear of
+Owen Griffith and others venturing on a potato crop without a sneer. And
+he positively snarled when he heard the prices the widow's piglings and
+bacon brought in the market. Not that he ascribed the prosperity of Mrs.
+Edwards to her own good management. No; he set that down to Evan Evans
+and his previous initiation on the Castella estate. He owed the
+farm-servant a grudge accordingly. He rejoiced when he heard that Rhys
+regarded Evans as an interloper, and never missed an opportunity, by
+subtle sneer or insinuation, to fan the supposed antagonism into an
+active flame.</p>
+
+<p>As years rolled on, and he saw the down of incipient manhood darken on
+the lip of Rhys, ever his mother's escort on rent-days, his innuendoes
+became broader and stronger. There was an air of self-sustained
+mastership about the sturdy young fellow that suggested ripe soil for
+his weeds.</p>
+
+<p>'Humph!' said he, when Rhys was about eighteen; 'I should have thought a
+stout chap like you might have saved your mother the cost of a <i>head
+man</i>.'</p>
+
+<p>At a later date: 'Well, young man, I never expected your father's son to
+submit to a servant's rule so long.'</p>
+
+<p>Had there been any <i>submission</i> in the case, Rhys would have taken fire
+at once. No hints would have been needed to provoke rebellion that would
+have led to the ousting of Evan. But the latter had never presumed to
+<i>give orders</i>, and, of late, had deferred to Rhys as his 'young
+master.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Whatever suggestions he made in farming matters were made to Mrs.
+Edwards. Command rested with <i>her</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Then Rhys had conceived a mortal antipathy to the agent that first
+rent-paying day, and he suspected a sinister motive in every word that
+fell from the ill-natured, thin lips.</p>
+
+<p>And it had been made a condition, by the shrewd widow, that Rhys should
+bridle his tongue, and allow nothing said by Mr. Pryse to provoke hasty
+reply, or she must take Evan in his stead as witness. Yet it was hard
+sometimes for either to listen quietly to the agent's coarse and
+insulting speeches, of which his noble employer had no suspicion.</p>
+
+<p>Some of his sharpest bullets were fired from a double-barrelled gun.
+'Well, Mrs. Edwards, I hear you and Evan Evans are about to make a match
+of it at last. How soon is this fine young man of yours to have a
+step-father?'</p>
+
+<p>A frown darkened the brow of Rhys, and an indignant retort was on his
+tongue, but, before a second word was uttered, the frown changed to a
+significant smile at a look from his mother.</p>
+
+<p>It was an open secret at the farm that Ales and Evan were courting, and
+only waited until they had saved enough money to set up housekeeping and
+farming for themselves, as husband and wife.</p>
+
+<p>Had Mr. Pryse but known it, there <i>was</i> an element of disquiet and
+rebellion at Brookside Farm, of which he might have taken advantage.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But he never gave a second thought to the boy whose walls he had
+levelled so wantonly. He had not seen that same boy, his passion over,
+pick up every scattered bit of stone, and patiently raise his walls once
+more.</p>
+
+<p>He had no suspicion how the strong will and pertinacity of that three
+years child would come later into collision with the mastership of his
+eldest brother, or the important part these stone chips would play in
+William's life, or how they might affect the welfare of the whole
+county, or make an enduring name when his own was forgotten.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>CHAPTER X.</span> <span class="smaller">FRIENDS AND BROTHERS.</span></h2>
+
+<p>There was no necessity for Mr. Pryse to suggest 'employment' for little
+William. In the last century, and far into this, children were set to
+work and expected to earn their own living at a wofully early age, and
+that long before machinery came into use and drove them into factories
+to be the slaves of brutal overseers, who scored their six and eight
+year old backs with weals from whip or stick on the slightest
+provocation. William Hutton, the historian, tells how he, a small child
+of seven years, was apprenticed, in 1730, to an overseer of Lombe's silk
+mill, in Derby, how he had to wear high pattens to reach the machine,
+had to rise at five in the depth of winter and hurry to work, slipping
+down on the ice as he ran, and how he was beaten till his back was all
+festering sores. And this was no uncommon case. I, who write this, can
+remember when the little barefooted children went to the cotton
+factories and print works at five in the morning, and worked till seven
+or eight at night.</p>
+
+<p>The boys and girls of this generation have no conception how children
+were trained and treated a few<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span> generations back. Not the poor only. The
+children of even rich parents had to endure painful punishments both at
+school and at home, and were fed sparely on coarse food for their
+health's sake. The late noble Lord Shaftesbury related how he and a
+sister were well-nigh starved in their childhood through the negligence
+of parents and servants.</p>
+
+<p>History and biography teem with such instances. So that when I state
+that William Edwards and Jonet were sent into their mother's fields to
+weed, and pick up stones, and scare the birds away from newly-sown lands
+before the boy was six years old, I cast no reflection on his mother,
+who had no experience of a different state of things.</p>
+
+<p>Nay, for her time, she was enlightened, and being a woman with good
+natural feeling, she was careful they were not taxed beyond their
+strength, as she and her husband had been; but that children should
+spend their hours in play, when they were old enough to be of use, had
+never dawned on her imagination. She considered she was doing her duty
+by them in setting them early to work, especially as she was careful
+they should be taught to read also.</p>
+
+<p>Davy worked in field and farm, alongside Rhys, without a murmur of
+hardship. And when Jonet was first set to feed the chickens, or to look
+for the eggs of hens that laid away, to pull peas or beans, or to shell
+the latter for the pot (peas were boiled in the pod), imitative William,
+always at her heels, and wanting to show his own cleverness, set himself
+to do likewise.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And so long as he set himself voluntarily to work to assist Jonet, he
+was busy as a bee, and proud of his doings. Or when his mother or Ales
+sent him hither or thither to fetch or carry, or directed him to perform
+small services, he was as willing and amenable to order as most boys of
+his age. But no sooner did Rhys take advantage of his precocious
+industry, and exercise an assumed right to command, and bid him do this
+or that, than William began to rebel.</p>
+
+<p>He was docile enough to his brother as a teacher. He was more eager to
+learn to read than Rhys was to instruct. Davy and Jonet took their
+spelling and reading lessons as compulsory tasks&mdash;Davy placidly, and
+Jonet with uneasy disfavour&mdash;but William with an absolute desire to
+<i>know</i>.</p>
+
+<p>He no sooner discovered that the Ten Commandments painted up in the
+church, and the inscriptions on the upright gravestones in the
+churchyard, were just made up of the alphabetical characters on his
+painted battledore, and that the big Bible his mother read aloud to them
+was all a mixture of the same letters, than a craving to penetrate the
+mystery of these combinations seized him. He felt he had achieved
+something when he made his first grand discovery on a headstone taller
+than himself; but when, at his request, Evan read out the inscription,
+his perplexity and curiosity increased.</p>
+
+<p>It was singular to see the little fellow&mdash;he was short for his
+age&mdash;Sunday by Sunday tracing letter or word, with tiny finger, on some
+grey old slab, while his seniors were gossiping all around.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'I tell you what,' said Rhys to him one Sunday when so employed, 'you
+might have been born in a stone quarry. I'm sure you ought to live in
+one, you do be so fond of the dirty rubbish.'</p>
+
+<p>'What's a stone quarry?' put in William, with wide-open eyes.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, bother! It's a place where stone grows,' was the impatient reply.</p>
+
+<p>'Grows like trees?' and the wondering eyes of the six years old querist
+opened still wider.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, what a plague you do be! No, grows like coal;' and away strode Rhys
+to avoid further questioning&mdash;a common but very unsatisfactory way of
+dealing with an inquiring child.</p>
+
+<p>'I'll be asking Robert Jones, he will tell me,' said William to himself.
+'Rhys do be caring more for Cate Griffith than for me, whatever,' his
+aggrieved looks following his well-grown brother as he strode over the
+grassy mound to join the weaver's wife and daughter under the
+patriarchal yew-tree, with all the importance of incipient manhood.</p>
+
+<p>The following day William was missing from the farm, but as this was not
+uncommon, only slight uneasiness was felt until evening.</p>
+
+<p>The boy had long before struck up a strange friendship with the
+red-haired peat-cutter, who, in fulfilment of his early promise, had
+taken him on his ass when bound to a colliery across the river for culm,
+and there let him see the horse plodding round and round in a circle to
+wind up coal and grimy colliers from the dark,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span> deep pit-shaft, and let
+down the empty tubs to be refilled. There the child had looked round in
+wonder at the great black heaps of coal, and at the half-naked children
+sent down the terrible dark hole, to work in the bowels of the mine, as
+Robert Jones explained to him.</p>
+
+<p>Later he had taken the little fellow to see how peat was cut with long,
+narrow, flat shovels, 'shaped like a marrow-spoon,' from the boggy top
+of Eglwysilan Mountain. And when his sled was loaded, he had placed the
+child before him on the end of the sled, and gone sliding down the steep
+mountain-side with him swiftly and securely, to the youngster's infinite
+delight. He was too young to dream of danger, and to the man, long
+practice had made the perilous descent safe and easy, swift as was the
+downward motion, and sharp as was the jerk at the bottom. And many a
+ride on the turf-cutter's sled did William have after that.</p>
+
+<p>The man had no children of his own, and, perhaps, that was the reason he
+took so kindly to the lad; answering his strange questions to the best
+of his untutored ability, and frequently giving him a mount on one of
+his patient beasts between tubs or panniers when going for loads, or
+carrying them for sale not too far away. To him the child could open all
+his wondering heart, fearing neither repulse nor ridicule, of which he
+had too much at home; and so their friendship grew.</p>
+
+<p>On that particular Monday morning, Robert Jones had started on a long
+round, and nothing remained for the young inquirer, who had sought him
+at his ordinary<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span> haunts, but to limp homeward in the afternoon, hungry,
+footsore, and disappointed.</p>
+
+<p>Cate Griffith, returning from the brook with a pitcher of water on her
+head and another in her hand, caught sight of him as he was passing her
+father's door.</p>
+
+<p>'Name o' goodness!' she cried, 'what brings you here this time o' day?
+Look you, father, here's little Willem Edwards!'</p>
+
+<p>The weaver, then changing his shuttle, looked out from his casement
+window, and in two minutes was at the door questioning the wanderer.</p>
+
+<p>Without any shyness or reservation the boy told where he had been, and
+for what; his brother's initiative remarks with the rest.</p>
+
+<p>Cate, now a rosy-cheeked, buxom lass on the borderland of womanhood,
+began to laugh outright, as she had often laughed before when Rhys
+amused her with some story of William's out-of-the-way questions.</p>
+
+<p>Her father checked her sternly. 'What do you be laughing at?'</p>
+
+<p>''Deed, he do be so queer. Rhys do say he be always at play with bits of
+stones. And now he asks if they do grow like trees. Oh, Willem, you are
+droll!'</p>
+
+<p>Again her laugh broke out. William, child though he was, crimsoned to
+the roots of his brown hair. He seemed to comprehend that Rhys had made
+a jest of him, and no one is more sensitive to ridicule than a child of
+tender years.</p>
+
+<p>'Carry your pitchers into the house, and stay there!'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span> cried her father.
+Then turning to the boy, who hesitated whether to linger or walk on, he
+said kindly&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'Never mind Cate, my little man, she talks foolishness. Come and sit on
+this bench beside me. I'll try to serve instead of Robert Jones.'</p>
+
+<p>William's face lit up. He climbed to a seat by the weaver's side,
+content to find he was no longer laughed at. And very intently he
+listened to Owen's simple explanation that the mountain was nearly all
+stone, and that a quarry was the place where strong men broke away the
+stone for building walls and houses, and that the mountains had been
+there ever since God created the world, so that he did not think stone
+grew. And if Owen's was not a learned geological definition, it was all
+the better adapted to juvenile comprehension. But, simple as it was, a
+shower of whys and hows were rained on the exponent during its course.</p>
+
+<p>Then William rose to depart, but something in his face, or in his
+lagging gait, or a casual word, caused the weaver to interrogate the
+boy. This elicited the admission that he had strayed away from home in
+the morning, and that no one knew, and, moreover, that he was very
+hungry.</p>
+
+<p>Owen looked grave. He called for Cate to bring some bread and a cup of
+milk, and began to read the boy a lesson on the inconsiderate wrong he
+had done, and the anxiety he would cause his mother.</p>
+
+<p>'You should never leave home without permission, Willem. Your poor
+mother will be fretting and crying for fear lest you have fallen over
+the rocks, or got into<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span> the river and been drowned, or lost your way on
+the mountain as you did four years ago, when Evan found you asleep under
+the Druids' rocking-stone. It is very cruel and wicked for a child to
+stray from home without leave.'</p>
+
+<p>William hung his head. 'I did not mean any harm,' he began; 'but,' in a
+changed tone, 'what's the Druids?'&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, you're here, are you? A fine hunt you have given us all, you young
+plague,' came in an angry shout from Rhys, who had crossed the brook and
+was advancing at a run.</p>
+
+<p>William's question died away unanswered. He got down from his stone seat
+inclined to be penitent for his misbehaviour. Owen Griffith had shown
+him that he had done wrong. He might have gone home and told his mother
+he was sorry. But Rhys, who had been as much alarmed at his absence as
+the rest, now he was found, caught him by the shoulder and shook him
+roughly.</p>
+
+<p>'Look you, if you do be running off again, I shall give you a good
+thrashing.'</p>
+
+<p>''Deed you won't,' was thrown back at him defiantly by William, whose
+penitence was at an end.</p>
+
+<p>'Won't I? You'll see. Sure, I've half a mind to do it now.'</p>
+
+<p>'Nay, nay,' interposed Griffith. 'Willem is sorry. He did not know he
+was doing wrong.'</p>
+
+<p>'Then he will have to learn. It's quite time he made himself useful.
+Jonet did before she was his age.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span> And so did I. We can have no idlers
+on our farm, whatever. Ah, Cate, is that you?' His voice had brought the
+girl to the open window. She leaned out, blushing like a peony. He
+joined her, and said something which made her giggle and provoked reply.
+Then ensued some whispering and laughter. Rhys apparently forgot all
+about William and his mother's anxiety whilst occupied so pleasantly,
+for there was no doubt Cate had more than a third-cousinly attraction
+for him, and chance opportunities for seeing her except on Sundays were
+not frequent.</p>
+
+<p>When his errand recurred to him, William had disappeared, and
+notwithstanding Rhys' longer legs, the fatigue of the small ones, the
+gathering dusk, and the steepness of the ascending path to the farm, the
+truant crossed the threshold first.</p>
+
+<p>At once uneasiness resolved itself into displeasure. He was scolded on
+all sides, and threatened with the loss of a supper if ever he ventured
+to give them such a fright again.</p>
+
+<p>'I wanted Robert Jones,' was all the excuse he made. The scolding was
+received with stolid silence, which was called sullenness.</p>
+
+<p>Yet he had not forgotten Owen's picture of his mother's distress, or his
+grave reproof for straying away, and had he been differently received,
+he might have been contrite and sued for pardon.</p>
+
+<p>It is a difficult matter, even in these analytic days, to search out the
+inner workings of the child-mind, or to understand all that influences
+wayward moods. How<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span> were those rudely-cultivated farmers to penetrate
+beneath the surface, to see the undeveloped oak in the immature acorn?</p>
+
+<p>'Robert Jones do be spoiling that boy,' said Mrs. Edwards, when the
+child was in bed. 'I wonder what he wanted with the man?'</p>
+
+<p>'Wanted? Sure, he wanted to ask if stones do grow like trees,' said
+Rhys, in a tone of impatient scorn. 'It was only last week he did be
+asking me if the trees made the wind, because it was always windy when
+the trees tossed about.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, <i>don't</i> they?' queried stolid Davy, amidst a roar of laughter, in
+which even the mother joined.</p>
+
+<p>'Now, don't you be as silly as Willem. I never before knew you ask such
+a foolish question,' said Rhys dogmatically.</p>
+
+<p>'No, Davy,' explained his mother, without stopping her busy wheel, 'it
+is the wind that blows the trees about,'&mdash;an answer which sufficed for
+him. He was not curious to learn what caused the winds, or whence they
+came, as William had been. He accepted facts as they were, untroubled by
+vain speculations.</p>
+
+<p>Undoubtedly William&mdash;the father's namesake, her youngest born&mdash;was the
+mother's darling, in spite of his odd ways. And however cross she might
+have been overnight, in the morning, when the others had dispersed, she
+took him to task for straying away without leave; not angrily, but
+sadly, showing him the trouble he was likely to cause, and the anxiety
+she had had, remembering the time when he was lost before.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It was a very effectual supplement to Owen Griffith's lecture; the
+sensitive boy's feelings were touched. He threw his arms around her
+neck, begged forgiveness, and promised the best of behaviour for the
+future.</p>
+
+<p>Alas, for a child's promises! William went to work beside Jonet like a
+little man, helped in seed-time and harvest, and won commendations from
+Ales and Evan. But he had his dreamy hours; he continued to pile up
+stones in odd corners, and was alternately ridiculed and rebuked by
+Rhys, whose interference he resented.</p>
+
+<p>This went on for about two years, trying the patience of both, and then
+came a more serious outbreak.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>CHAPTER XI.</span> <span class="smaller">A MEMORABLE ENCOUNTER.</span></h2>
+
+<p>William's rebellion had begun to show itself in sullen disregard of his
+brother's orders. He was always active and willing when his mother or
+Evan called him&mdash;Davy might convey a message, but never had an
+independent order to give&mdash;he was Jonet's obedient bondslave, but when
+Rhys demanded his services or attention he generally turned a deaf ear.
+For this, Rhys&mdash;who considered his ten years' seniority quite a warranty
+for control as his mother's deputy and his dead father's
+representative&mdash;took him to task imperiously, not with any desire to be
+knowingly overbearing, but from a stern sense of his own duty to a lazy
+lad.</p>
+
+<p>At length, one bright day in early spring, when William was little more
+than nine years of age, he stood lingering after the midday meal close
+beside the stone gate-posts of a field where Davy and Jonet were already
+busy weeding a freshly springing crop of corn. His arms rested upon the
+coping of the wall with his chin upon them, whilst he, looking down into
+the fertile vale below&mdash;where glimpses of the shining river were
+discernible like twinkling stars, through the tender<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span> green shoots which
+veiled the swaying boughs on its densely-wooded banks&mdash;seemed lost in a
+dreamy mist of speculative thought. The boy's reverie was rudely broken.</p>
+
+<p>'Now then, lazyback! What do you be doing there?' called out Rhys, who
+carried a spade on one shoulder and a wicker basket in his hand, which
+he tossed down at his brother's feet. No answer coming, he called out
+again, 'What do you be doing there?'</p>
+
+<p>'I do be thinking,' came composedly from William.</p>
+
+<p>'Thinking, indeed! I wish you would be thinking about your work. What
+can you have to think about, whatever?'</p>
+
+<p>''Deed, nobody knows my thinks,' replied the boy, without turning round.</p>
+
+<p>'You will very soon know <i>my thinks</i>,' retorted Rhys, 'if you do not
+pick up your basket, and get to your weeding. You are one of the "late
+and lazy who will never be rich." Come, stir you.' And, as if to enforce
+obedience, Rhys raised his disengaged hand and struck the other a sharp
+blow across the shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>At once William turned round, his cheeks and eyes aflame. Rhys thought
+he was about to strike him back again.</p>
+
+<p>Instead, he gave the empty basket a kick that sent it flying over the
+ridges, and was out at the narrow gateway in an instant, with a defiant
+air that seemed to dare Rhys to lay hands upon him again, or attempt to
+draw him back.</p>
+
+<p>That day he was seen no more upon the farm until<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span> nightfall, when he was
+sent to bed supperless as a punishment.</p>
+
+<p>He was up betimes in the morning, and had the fire alight before any one
+else was astir. He was having a wash at the spring when Ales came into
+the farmyard.</p>
+
+<p>'Name o' goodness!' exclaimed she, 'what's got you out of bed so soon?
+Want your breakfast, I suppose?'</p>
+
+<p>William nodded in assent, on his way to the common towel.</p>
+
+<p>'Do you think you be deserving any?'</p>
+
+<p>'Does Rhys be deserving any?'</p>
+
+<p>Ales had a proverb ready, 'Who does well, deserves well.'</p>
+
+<p>'Is it doing well to call names and be striking his brother?'</p>
+
+<p>Ales had no direct answer to that. 'Rhys says you are idle and should be
+made to work. You do be playing with stones when you should be weeding
+or knitting. <i>He</i> does always be working hard,' she replied evasively.</p>
+
+<p>Prompt was the retort, 'A big man should work, I will do better work
+than Rhys when I am as big. 'Deed I will.'</p>
+
+<p>This conversation had taken place during the hasty ablutions of Ales,
+who had latterly grown uncommonly anxious to present 'a shining morning
+face' to Evan when he appeared. As she combed out her hair at the
+diminutive looking-glass he had bought her, as a hint, and which hung
+beside the storehouse door, she began in an insinuating tone<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span>&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'And where did you be going yesterday, Willem? Did you be with Robert
+Jones?'</p>
+
+<p>'Never be you minding,' said the boy, walking past with a pitcher of
+water for the porridge. And no further information could she or any one
+else extract from him.</p>
+
+<p>After that, whenever Rhys and he came into collision he disappeared, and
+none could say whither he went or with whom. Cate or Owen Griffith might
+see him pass the cottage door, and exchange a 'good-day' greeting, but
+beyond that his wanderings were unknown.</p>
+
+<p>In a mountainous parish like Eglwysilan, where was no village community,
+where farms and cottages were mostly solitary and far apart, there was
+little chance of encountering many strollers out of the main highway,
+except on market-days.</p>
+
+<p>Wandering aimlessly in his blind passion, on the day when Rhys had
+struck him, hardly noting the way he went, he found himself all on a
+sudden on what appeared to be a short, grass-grown roadway, bordered on
+both sides by upright blocks of stone, more stunted and less shapely
+than the slabs in the churchyard, but planted there with so much method
+in their irregular intervals, they might indeed have been dwarf guards
+to some great giant turned suddenly to stone by the magic art of a still
+greater necromancer of the olden time, as he had heard.</p>
+
+<p>Such legends were common on the domestic hearth. So that, although it
+was a bright spring afternoon, an eerie feeling crept over the
+passionate boy, especially when he found himself within a wide circle of
+such<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span> stones, surrounding, in double file, a huge angular mass of like
+stone, narrowing downwards from a flat top, capped by a second stone,
+and delicately poised on the rounded point of a small conical base in a
+hollowed depression of the natural rock, and in some sort bearing out
+the simile of the petrified giant's throne.</p>
+
+<p>As William looked upon this unshapely mass, some dreamy recollection
+floated through his mind of having visited the spot before, when the
+stones had seemed alive, and making mouths at him. Without nearing the
+central stone, but keeping his eye upon it, he walked slowly round
+within the inner circle, and, as he went discovered a second path
+(leading north) corresponding with the one by which he had entered from
+the south.</p>
+
+<p>Then it dawned upon him this must indeed be the spot where he had lain
+down faint and tired, when he was, oh, such a little boy, and had been
+so frightened by the grim aspect of the stones, as the dark night had
+come on, and he could not rise to get away.</p>
+
+<p>Soon he ventured to touch the large central stone that had terrified him
+before by giving way on the pressure of his tiny hand. It swayed and
+rocked to and fro, and he drew back instinctively, but it did not fall.
+And now he knew it surely for the great rocking-stone, and no longer
+feared that it would fall and crush him so long as he was good and true,
+for so the legend ran.</p>
+
+<p>But now other doubts and fears oppressed him. These would be the very
+Druid-stones Owen Griffith had named, and Robert Jones had warned him
+not to seek, lest some great harm should come to him.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Was it true there were once men called Druids, and did they come to life
+at midnight and nod to the moon, and to the big nodding-stones? Robert
+Jones and Ales both said they did, though they had never ventured there
+at midnight to see. They only looked like ill-shaped stones, too little
+for men. But had they not made faces at him when he was a bit of a baby
+crying there in the dark?</p>
+
+<p>The boy's heart sank. He was not proof against the grim and weird
+recollection. He took to his heels and ran out of the memory-haunted
+circle by the stone-guarded avenue next to him, nor stopped until he had
+left the desolate and barren spot far behind.</p>
+
+<p>But where was he? That was not the way towards home. He stood on a wild
+heath, high above the valley of the Taff, with the mountain rising and
+stretching far away on his right hand, with here and there labourers
+tilling the red-brown upland fields, and children at work beside them,
+as he should have been working 'but for Rhys,' he told himself.</p>
+
+<p>He did not know, and could not see it, but the Merthyr Tydvil road, such
+as it was, lay sunk between the heath and the receding mountain. He had
+only to gain that, and turn completely round, to find his way homeward.</p>
+
+<p>He looked to the wooded declivity on his left, where birds were calling
+to their mates under the swelling pinky buds or pale-green opening fans,
+and the odour of wood violets came sweetly fresh in every breath he
+drew. A rabbit rose and scuttered past him, and made<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span> for the underwood,
+where the golden crosiers of trooping ferns were uncurling in their
+beauty. The river ran far below, ran with an inviting rush. One moment,
+and the boy had plunged into the wood. 'He would <i>not</i> hurry home to be
+struck by Rhys.'</p>
+
+<p>He could easily find his way back with the river to guide him.</p>
+
+<p>So, now slipping, now catching at the trunk of a tree to maintain a
+foothold, he scrambled nearer to the river's brink, where was no more
+perceptible path than what had been made by intruders like himself. Once
+there he fancied the water was more than commonly disturbed; it was here
+and there flecked with foam and swirled in eddies. 'Surely the river
+must be in flood,' he said to himself.</p>
+
+<p>A little way off a well-dressed young man was seated on a stone, fishing
+with rod and line.</p>
+
+<p>William had no shyness. 'Why does the water make such a noise to-day,
+and be so rough?' he asked.</p>
+
+<p>'Don't you know? It is from the falls. The river is always noisy here.
+It is louder higher up the stream.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh,' said William; 'what are the falls?'</p>
+
+<p>'Indeed you had better go on a bit farther and see for yourself, my lad.
+But be careful how you go.'</p>
+
+<p>The spirit of adventure was on the boy. He thanked the man and did 'go
+on,' until he stood still with amazement, for there the full river came
+leaping down, in broken falls, from rock to intercepting rock, some
+fifteen feet in all; but they might have been fifty for what the
+home-kept boy knew.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Strange is the fascination of living, leaping water. He stood there
+gazing spellbound, lost in admiration, listening to the tumultuous
+uproar, as the swift waters came rushing and flashing downwards,
+striking themselves against the rocks into angry foam that William
+mentally compared to suds when Ales was washing, only he never had seen
+washing on so large a scale. If there were finer cascades in the world
+he had not seen them. He was fascinated by what he did see, and lingered
+long.</p>
+
+<p>'I wonder if Rhys or Davy ever saw these falls?' he said to himself;
+'they never told <i>me</i>. They tell <i>me</i> nothing. But I will find out
+things for myself.'</p>
+
+<p>The fisherman was rising from his stone when William again drew near. He
+had his rod and basket in hand prepared to go.</p>
+
+<p>'Well, what do you think of the falls?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, 'deed, and they was wonderful&mdash;and terrible. I was thinking how
+soon they would drown a man.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, or a boy either. Which way are you going?'</p>
+
+<p>'By the riverside, through the wood as far as the ford.'</p>
+
+<p>'That will not be safe at this hour. You might slip into the stream. You
+had best go back the way you came.'</p>
+
+<p>'I&mdash;I dare not,' stammered William.</p>
+
+<p>'Dare not? Yet you are not afraid to go through these pathless woods by
+the riverside at dusk, though a false step might be fatal. Come along
+with me; I'll see you on a safe road.'</p>
+
+<p>William followed through the ascending wood cau<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span>tiously as before, ready
+to brave anything with such a companion.</p>
+
+<p>The sun had not set when they stood upon the heath above, and then the
+stranger inquired&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'Well, my boy, of what are you afraid?'</p>
+
+<p>'Of going past the Druids' stones, sir.'</p>
+
+<p>'So you are superstitious? What harm can a few old stones do to a stout
+boy like you?' was asked with a broad smile.</p>
+
+<p>William felt half-ashamed of the confession, how he had been lost when
+quite little, and had seen the stones make faces at him, adding the
+current stories he had heard, and his fright that afternoon.</p>
+
+<p>By this time they were descending a slope from the barren heath to the
+Merthyr Tydvil highway, thus avoiding close proximity to the dreaded
+circle, although the roadway passed on a lower level. As they went, the
+stranger did his best to disabuse the boy's mind of his foolish terrors,
+and gave him to understand that long before there were any Christian
+churches in the land, or any Christian clergymen, the Druids were the
+priests, the priests of Baal, and set up those stones for their temples.
+Yet he said nothing of their horrid rites or human sacrifices, lest he
+should confirm the boy's dread of the stones.</p>
+
+<p>William listened with wide-open ears, putting in a question here and
+there, as was his wont, and, to his delight, receiving intelligent
+replies adapted to the capacity of a thinking child. He was very anxious
+to know something more about the priests of Baal, but,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span> after a brief
+identification of them with the idolatrous worshippers of the sun, the
+stranger, having ascertained that he could read, referred him to the
+Bible for further information.</p>
+
+<p>They had reached the well-trodden turning to the ford. The sun had by
+this time set, and twilight was closing in.</p>
+
+<p>'I presume our ways part here,' observed the tall stranger. 'Good-bye.
+Do not forget what I have told you. Brave boys who fear God, and do
+their duty to their fellows, do not dread the aspect of a few grey old
+stones.'</p>
+
+<p>'I'm not afraid of stones, sir. I've got a heap, and I build with them.
+But Rhys kicks them over and says I waste my time.'</p>
+
+<p>'So you build with stones, do you? And, pray, what do you build?' asked
+the gentleman, with a comical smile, unseen in the twilight. 'Do you
+think you could build a bridge over this treacherous river? You would do
+good service if you could,' he added, <i>sotto voce</i>.</p>
+
+<p>William felt abashed. He had an uncomfortable suspicion he was being
+laughed at.</p>
+
+<p>'I am only a boy, sir. I can only <i>try</i> to build. But when I am a man,
+Rhys shall see!'</p>
+
+<p>'And who is Rhys?' put the other, resuming his walk when he found the
+boy did not turn towards the cottage by the ford.</p>
+
+<p>'Rhys is my big brother. But, if you please, sir, what do be a
+<i>bridge?</i>'</p>
+
+<p>Without evincing any surprise at the ignorance of a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span> boy of his class
+and age, who could not have travelled far from home, the other answered
+promptly, 'A bridge is a roadway built <i>over</i> a river so that people may
+walk or ride across without wetting their feet. Bridges are sometimes
+built of wood, sometimes of stone or brick. A bridge is sadly wanted
+hereabouts, my boy. I narrowly escaped being swept away at the ford this
+morning.'</p>
+
+<p>William drew in his breath. 'Oh-h-h! Would a bridge have saved my father
+from being drowned?'</p>
+
+<p>'It would preserve any one who had occasion to cross.'</p>
+
+<p>'Then I'll build one when I'm a man, 'deed I will,' came promptly.</p>
+
+<p>The stranger, amused by William's earnestness, put some few questions,
+in his turn, respecting his father's death, his name, and occupation,
+ascertained whence arose his peculiar fancy for building, and suggested
+that if the church had attracted him so much he should contrive to visit
+the ruins of Caerphilly Castle, which he would find much more wonderful
+as a building; adding that he would have to cross a drawbridge to get
+into the castle.</p>
+
+<p>'Why, mother and Rhys go to Caerphilly market every week. They never
+told me of the wonderful castle, whatever! But I'll go myself,' cried
+William, his imagination fired, and his indignation rising under the
+supposition that he had been kept wilfully in the dark. It did not occur
+to him that familiarity had taken the wonder out of the ancient pile for
+his elders.</p>
+
+<p>They had reached the foot of the steep ascent to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span> farm, which
+William pointed out with some pride as his home, and there the
+stranger&mdash;who said he was on his way to the vicarage&mdash;took leave of him,
+saying that his name was Morris, and perhaps they might meet again some
+day, for he was interested in stone, but it was ironstone and not for
+building. However, before he went, he gave the boy a word or two of
+advice.</p>
+
+<p>'Remember,' said he, 'you have a character to build before you think of
+building houses and churches, and a <i>boy</i> may begin to build that.'</p>
+
+<p>'How?' was asked, William's grey eyes opening wide.</p>
+
+<p>'By fearing God, and doing his duty. But there are bad characters as
+well as good ones, and every act of disobedience, of untruthfulness, of
+indolence, goes to build up the evil in place of the good.'</p>
+
+<p>He had left William something to ponder. That was a memorable
+encounter.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>CHAPTER XII.</span> <span class="smaller">CAERPHILLY CASTLE.</span></h2>
+
+<p>A country vicar in the last century bore little or no resemblance to a
+clergyman of any status in this. He was a much more homely and
+patriarchal character, especially among the Welsh mountains.</p>
+
+<p>Whatever his learning or his eloquence, he did not hesitate to till his
+own glebe-lands, or to perform offices from which the pastor of to-day
+would shrink as derogatory to his cloth. As a rule, his stipend was
+small, and necessity compelled him so to labour. He came, however,
+nearer to his flock in consequence.</p>
+
+<p>When Mrs. Edwards, the Sunday following William's escapade, besought the
+Rev. John Smith to admonish her refractory son, who perversely and
+sullenly refused obedience to his eldest brother, idling and playing
+with stones when he should be at work on the farm, and wandering no one
+knew whither when reproved, she was surprised to hear him say&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'Um, ah, yes, I wanted to have a word with that boy of yours. But which
+am I to admonish, the eldest, who should set an example of brotherly
+love and consideration,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span> or the youngest, who resents what he regards as
+petty persecution and overbearing assumption?'</p>
+
+<p>''Deed, sir, Rhys has only set a good example to the rest. He do work
+hard upon the farm all day, and teach them to read at night; and he do
+have a right to expect them to look up to him, and do what he tells
+them; for you see, sir, he do be grown quite a young man, and a good
+farmer too, look you.'</p>
+
+<p>'Um, ah, yes, yes. I see. I understand all about it, Mrs. Edwards,' was
+the vicar's running comment; 'I'll admonish the offender,' the twinkle
+in his genial blue eyes, as he turned to accost another parishioner,
+puzzling her greatly.</p>
+
+<p>However, as there was peace between the brothers for a considerable
+time, the widow congratulated herself on bespeaking the good vicar's
+interference.</p>
+
+<p>She was not aware, for Rhys did not think proper to say, that, after
+asking him confidentially if the gossip he had heard about himself and
+William was true, and what were the rights of the case, the vicar, out
+of his own mouth, had convicted him of a want of brotherly kindness and
+forbearance, and had 'admonished' him to remember what a lazy lad <i>he</i>
+had been prior to his father's death, and had asked how he would have
+liked an elder brother to come hectoring over him in those days? In
+short, he read Rhys an informal homily on arrogant assumption, and the
+need to exercise a degree of lenity towards a brother so much younger,
+who was in all probability no worse than he had been himself. It was
+something like a pinprick to an inflated balloon.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Rhys did not hold his head quite so high as usual when he joined Cate
+and her father at the churchyard stile; and was so quiet during the walk
+homeward that Cate tossed her hat-crowned red head about in offended
+pettishness, and Owen looked at him askance, wondering what the good
+vicar had said to take all the brightness out of him.</p>
+
+<p>William was no less reticent. But, child though he was, he lived in a
+dream-world of his own, and had ceased to reveal his inner self on the
+domestic hearth, scared by the loud laughter and mockery that greeted
+his curious inquiries and precocious remarks.</p>
+
+<p>In his silence, therefore, there was nothing to surprise his mother, who
+had fallen in with the general opinion that he was sullen. She had seen
+the vicar lead him aside, and took the reprimand for granted.</p>
+
+<p>The opening words of his conversation with the nine years boy did not
+seem much like a reprimand.</p>
+
+<p>'So, William, I hear you are going to be a great builder? And Mr. Morris
+tells me you want to know all about the Tower of Babel and Solomon's
+Temple, the Druidical temples, and St. Helen's Church here, with bridges
+and I do not know what beside. Now which of all these are we to talk
+about first?'</p>
+
+<p>He had unlocked the boy's heart as with a magic key. Here was some one
+else who did not laugh at him. Their conversation lasted little over a
+quarter of an hour, and William was frequently the catechist, but it
+broke off like a serial story, 'to be continued.' And though it had been
+chiefly about building and builders,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span> the vicar had not let the boy go
+away without a few words of gentle advice on his duty to himself and
+others&mdash;a lesson referred back to the two tablets of stone delivered to
+Moses amid the fiery terrors of Sinai.</p>
+
+<p>After that there was generally a Sunday morning chat in the churchyard,
+and on one occasion the vicar took the boy home with him to dinner, a
+distinction that puzzled Mrs. Edwards exceedingly, and made Rhys no less
+jealous.</p>
+
+<p>The vicar, a small man surmounted by a big clerical wig, had simply
+shown the boy a few architectural pictures in illustrated books, with a
+brief description of his own, the letterpress being English, and the
+boy's education stopping short at Welsh.</p>
+
+<p>There was a water-colour drawing upon the parlour wall of a ruined
+castle with a tower that had been rent from battlement to base, and
+appeared in the act of falling. It was too remarkable to escape
+William's observation. He eyed it intently for some minutes. At length
+he asked, 'What place is that, sir?'</p>
+
+<p>'That? Oh, that is Caerphilly Castle, the oldest fortress in Cambria. Do
+you not know it?'</p>
+
+<p>'No, but I mean to go there when the tailor comes to make me some proper
+clothes. The packman let me have the cloth for the stockings I have
+knitted, look you.'</p>
+
+<p>'Um, ah. So you are in a hurry to discard the ancient Cymric kilt are
+you?'</p>
+
+<p>'They make one look so like a girl,' was William's shamefaced answer.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'Yet there are grown men both in Wales and in Scotland who still cling
+to the kilt, and are proud of it. You will be for casting off the old
+Saxon smock-frock next.'</p>
+
+<p>''Deed no, sir. Men wear smock-frocks, women don't. Rhys wears one and
+Evan too.'</p>
+
+<p>But, ancient or modern, no sooner had William a chance of an exchange
+for a short-tailed coat and a pair of knee-breeches than he felt he had
+made a step towards manhood, much as Davy had done before him&mdash;Davy, who
+went plodding along from day to day and from week to week, with scarcely
+a thought that did not centre in the farm, and who never troubled
+himself about 'whys' or 'wherefores.'</p>
+
+<p>'William is not at church to-day. How is that?' remarked the vicar to
+Mrs. Edwards on the Whitsunday, as he took his customary stroll among
+his parishioners in all the importance of his wig and three-cornered
+hat, noting each newly flower-decked grave as he went, and perhaps
+making a kindly remark in passing.</p>
+
+<p>''Deed, sir, I thought he would be here. He was dressed before any of
+us. Ales said he was proud as a peony of his new clothes, and had gone
+off first to show himself. He do be a strange boy.'</p>
+
+<p>'Did Rhys say anything to him about them?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, sure, he told him that now he was being dressed like a man he
+hoped he would cease to be playing with stones like a baby.'</p>
+
+<p>'Um, ah, yes, yes. I thought as much. You need not be alarmed if William
+is not home until late. I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span> can partly guess where he has gone. He is not
+doing any harm, my good friend. He is in much less danger than Rhys, I
+can assure you.'</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Edwards looked up in the vicar's expressive face, and following the
+glance of his pleasantly twinkling eye, her own rested on her eldest
+son, carefully handing Cate Griffith over the tall stile.</p>
+
+<p>She knew nothing of electricity, but certainly something like an
+electric shock passed through her, with its instantaneous enlightenment.
+A moment she stood dazed, then turned to address the vicar, but he was
+gone, and talking with a grey-haired old couple of a son who had been
+lost at sea, who had no grave to be dressed with flowers that
+Whitsuntide.</p>
+
+<p>William was forgotten in the newer care. There was no mistaking the
+attitude, the tender expression in the face of Rhys, or the coquettish
+aspect of the ruddy maiden as she placed her plump brown hand in his.</p>
+
+<p>'Sure,' said the widow to herself, 'Cate could get over a stile without
+help. I've seen her climb a tree or get over a wall before now. <i>That's</i>
+why Mrs. Griffith's been so ready to let Cate come to the farm to help
+at harvest-time, or whenever we were pushed. I see it all now, and the
+fear lest she should go home by herself after dark, as if the road did
+not be straight enough. And him a boy, not twenty yet. What do the woman
+be thinking of? Do she be thinking I would let Cate come on the farm as
+Rhys' wife, when Ales and Evan get married? Oh, Rhys, Rhys, and me a
+widow with three younger ones to rear, look you!'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Jonet and Davy, standing close beside her, during her brief colloquy
+with the vicar, had no clue to the significance of his hint or his
+glance; but they could read the trouble on their mother's puckering
+brow, without suspicion of its cause.</p>
+
+<p>'What be the matter, mother?' asked Jonet anxiously, sidling up to her
+and slipping a small palm into the larger one. 'Do you be uneasy about
+Willem?'</p>
+
+<p>''Deed, Willem's all right. The vicar said so. You need not fret over
+him,' said Davy placidly. 'He will be gone to show Robert Jones his new
+clothes.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, yes, sure, that will be it,' assented the widow, smoothing her
+ruffled countenance with an effort, unwilling to share her discovery
+with either Davy or Jonet, although the former was by this time quite as
+old as Rhys had been when he felt himself entitled to assume a general
+protectorate of the family.</p>
+
+<p>Taking Jonet by the hand, she made her way across the churchyard more
+hastily than usual, barely nodding in recognition of an acquaintance who
+advanced a step or so in expectation of a chat. Her desire was to keep
+Rhys and Cate in sight, and so confirm or dispel her newly-aroused
+suspicions.</p>
+
+<p>But there were others before her at the stile, a father and mother, with
+three or four young children, to be helped up the steps on one side and
+down the other, and by the time her turn came, Rhys and the Griffiths
+were well in advance, and lost to sight by a bend in the road.</p>
+
+<p>Davy was always inclined to saunter along, and Jonet, however brisk at
+starting, began to drag heavily after<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span> the first mile on the return,
+encumbered by her Sunday shoes.</p>
+
+<p>For all that neither William nor Rhys were at home when they got there,
+and the rare Sunday's dinner of boiled meat and potatoes was on the
+table, with buttermilk to wash it down, before the latter came hurrying
+in, his cheeks aglow.</p>
+
+<p>The uneasy look on Mrs. Edwards' face had not been set aside with her
+hat and cloak&mdash;worn in all seasons on account of uncertain skies&mdash;nor
+had she found it as easy to conceal her displeasure with a smile, as it
+was to cover her best linsey-woolsey skirt with a fair linen apron.</p>
+
+<p>'Has not Willem come in?' asked Rhys, glancing round the kitchen.</p>
+
+<p>'No!' said his mother curtly, 'and <i>you</i> have not been hurrying
+yourself.'</p>
+
+<p>'Owen Griffith kept me talking about the success of his new crop of
+potatoes. He says that his brothers, and Roberts, and Lloyd are all for
+trying them next year.'</p>
+
+<p>'Potatoes, indeed!' his mother jerked out, and he looked up at her. But
+he set her evident ill-humour down to the absence of William, as did
+both Evan and Ales.</p>
+
+<p>And where was William rambling that bright Whitsunday morning, when he
+should have been helping his mother to dress his father's grave with
+flowers?</p>
+
+<p>Had he gone, as suggested, to parade his manly suit before his friend
+Robert Jones?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Not he; that would hardly have accounted for his absence from church,
+since the turf-cutter's cottage was on the direct road-side.</p>
+
+<p>No. When the vicar was giving out his text, William Edwards was studying
+a 'sermon in stones,' his text being Caerphilly Castle, and he standing
+in blank awe and amazement beneath the barbican towers of the only
+drawbridge time has spared out of the original thirteen, much as he had
+stood in infancy overpowered by the comparative vastness of Eglwysilan's
+church when he was first brought face to face with it.</p>
+
+<p>And now it was but a dumpy boy of nine who stood transfixed by that
+approach to a stronghold, 'of which the very ruins are stupendous,' a
+boy unread in history, who knew nothing of the Romans, or of Beli Gwar,
+or of Robert Fitzhamon, or of any of the conjectural first-founders, or
+of Edward the First who added so largely to its strength and size. He
+could see that it stood encircled by water in a wide plain surrounded by
+dark and barren mountains, but had any one informed him that it occupied
+an area equal to Windsor Castle he would have been no wiser, never
+having seen a castle before, or heard of any Windsor except the lord of
+the soil around his home.</p>
+
+<p>With mountains he was familiar. Their grandeur did not oppress him. They
+were the work of the infinite God who made the whole world, who set the
+sun and the moon and stars high in the heavens to give us light. The
+creation of the universe by the Almighty hand was no new idea in the
+boy's mind. But that men, only<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span> <i>men</i>, should have put that vast pile
+together, its towers, its massive walls that had outlasted hundreds of
+years, was suggestive of possibilities and capabilities that took his
+breath away.</p>
+
+<p>He stood there long, not so much because he was tired with his
+five-miles' rough walk that hot morning, but to overcome his first
+sensations of awe. Then he passed between the two great towers, and
+traversed courts and alleys, citadel, hall, chapel, whatever the
+pillared areas, the vast walls and arched windows, may suggest to
+antiquaries. To the boy they suggested only a marvellous enigma it was
+his fixed determination to solve <i>some</i> day.</p>
+
+<p>In his explorations he had to scramble over the fragmentary ruins of a
+second drawbridge between flanking towers, over which the friendly ivy
+had thrown an evergreen mantle. Here he stood gazing astonished at the
+mass of solid masonry which had walled the castle in, and at a great
+arched gateway under which he passed. He groped his way down to an
+underground chamber where had been a smelting furnace and a mint; and
+from that wonder of wonders, a staircase to the turret-top.</p>
+
+<p>But nothing held him so spellbound as the leaning tower, which, with
+chambers and passages complete, and outer walls full ten feet thick,
+overhung its base nearly four yards, a threatening mass that so had hung
+in mid air since the convulsion that had rent the tower in twain
+centuries before, yet held aloft as surely as the tower of Bologna or of
+Pisa.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing knew William of these, or of battles or sieges,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span> or of the force
+of water let in on molten metal; but he could wonder how the stones held
+together, and he could argue with himself that what had been done might
+be done.</p>
+
+<p>Aladdin's enchanted garden of precious stones was nothing to what
+Caerphilly Castle was to the boy William Edwards.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>CHAPTER XIII.</span> <span class="smaller">MAN PROPOSES.</span></h2>
+
+<p>Although, being warned by previous experience, William had stuffed his
+new pockets with bread before leaving home in the morning, he found that
+was a sorry substitute for a hearty dinner, and when he limped home in
+the waning light of the long summer evening, supper at the farm was over
+and cleared away. It was a doleful prospect, for there was an aching
+void in his interior that all the wonders of Caerphilly Castle had not
+served to fill.</p>
+
+<p>He had left home jauntily enough in the morning, but give any lad of his
+years a ten-miles' walk on a hot summer day, on a rough road up hill and
+down dale, and add a couple more miles of scrambling over ruins, and I
+venture to say all the jauntiness would be taken out of him. He would
+look as dusty and limp and jaded as did William Edwards, and his secret
+enthusiasm would not prevent a wistful look at the table, bare of all
+save crumbs and milky rings where mugs had been.</p>
+
+<p>Rhys had stood propping up the door-post as he ascended the stony lane,
+and entered the enclosure in front of the house by the stile.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'What do you mean by coming home at this time of night?' he cried
+sharply, catching his brother by the shoulder. 'Where have you been all
+day, you vagabond, wearing the shoes off your feet?'</p>
+
+<p>'I've not been after Cate Griffith,' was flung back in retort, and, as
+if a stone had struck him, the grip of Rhys on the shoulder relaxed, to
+let the 'vagabond' pass in.</p>
+
+<p>The empty table was not more expressive to him than was the averted
+countenance of his mother, who sat on the high-backed settle, her brow
+clouded, her unseeing eyes steadfastly gazing at the low hearth where
+the embers were smouldering into white ashes. Probably she did not see
+him as he dropped wearily down on a three-legged stool opposite.</p>
+
+<p>Davy sat at the table, half asleep, his face hidden on his folded arms.
+Evan was busy in the farmyard. He could hear his wooden shoes clattering
+over the stones. Ales was going in and out.</p>
+
+<p>Jonet, who had been watching for William's return, with her light-brown
+head and half her body stretched out of the bedroom window, came
+noiselessly across the wide kitchen. Her arm stole lovingly around his
+neck. 'You are tired, Willem; do you be hungry?'</p>
+
+<p>He gave her hand a squeeze and nodded. Her bare feet were off towards
+the dairy.</p>
+
+<p>There was a whispering in the passage. In a few minutes Ales brought in
+a mug of buttermilk and a great hunch of brown bread.</p>
+
+<p>'Here,' she cried, 'eat that; though you don't deserve it, going off no
+one knows where.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He thanked her for the unhoped-for supper, but he did not tell her where
+he had been, though he knew she had an old mother living somewhere in
+Caerphilly. Whereabouts he did not know, and, having no news of the poor
+rheumatic old woman, he munched his bread in silence.</p>
+
+<p>His mother never raised her head. If she saw him she made no sign. Rhys
+had been away all the afternoon. That lay heavier on her heart than any
+wanderings of William, though <i>he</i> thought otherwise. There was no
+red-headed Cate lying in wait for her youngest born&mdash;no one seeking to
+steal his heart away from her. She was hesitating whether to take Rhys
+to task, or, as Ales suggested, to 'wait and let the waters pass.'</p>
+
+<p>But Jane Edwards had not a passive nature. She was more inclined to be
+up and doing than to wait. 'Yes,' she communed with herself, 'the waters
+may pass, but they may carry my Rhys with them. I want no Cate ordering
+about here; the artful jade!'</p>
+
+<p>As if the very thought had been a stimulus, she rose abruptly, and,
+passing out into the moonlight, joined her son, who was bending over the
+low stone wall, looking intently down the rugged slope.</p>
+
+<p>'What are you looking for, Rhys?'</p>
+
+<p>He gave a sudden start as she went on, 'Do you be watching the moonlight
+on the river, and thinking how different was the night that took your
+father from us?'</p>
+
+<p>She put her arm within his as she spoke, and laid her head, in its white
+linen cap, against his shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, Rhys, that was a terrible time, a terrible time.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span> But, thanks be to
+God, we won through it. And it made a man of you, my dear boy. Well do I
+remember how you came to comfort me, and promised always to be a good
+son, and do your duty by me, and by the children, and by the farm, in
+the sight of God. And you have always done it, Rhys, <i>fach</i>, always&mdash;
+And&mdash;and&mdash;it would be breaking my heart, Rhys, if&mdash;if&mdash;you should be
+caring more for some one else than for your promise&mdash;or for your
+mother&mdash;and&mdash;and for Jonet&mdash;and the others.' And there she paused, but
+he made no response, and she continued.</p>
+
+<p>The latter half of the sentence was sobbed rather than spoken, and Rhys,
+who had a tender heart, notwithstanding his contempt for William's
+day-dreams, was deeply moved by her emotion.</p>
+
+<p>For the moment, Cate and his own day-dreams were lost sight of.</p>
+
+<p>'Mother, dear,' said he, not perhaps so truthfully as might have been,
+though he felt at the time that all he said <i>was</i> true. 'Mother, no one
+can ever come between us, or make me forget my old promise. What makes
+you be thinking so to-night? Have I not done my duty so far?' And now
+his strong arm went round her with more than the old protectorate.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, yes, indeed, Rhys, you have always been a good son; but&mdash;but&mdash;you
+have been something different of late&mdash;and&mdash;I thought, perhaps, Elain
+Lloyd&mdash;or&mdash;or&mdash;Cate Griffith might have been looking out for you, and
+for stealing your heart away from us all, look you.'</p>
+
+<p>He began a fresh disclaimer at the mention of Elain<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span> Lloyd, but stopped
+short, and she could feel him wince and hold his breath when the name of
+Cate Griffith followed.</p>
+
+<p>The denial died upon his lips. There was a pause. Early or precipitate
+marriages are not common in Wales. The consent of parents must first be
+obtained, and he had not yet spoken of marriage to Cate, but he knew the
+anticipation lurked in both their hearts, and there was a momentary
+struggle between two loves&mdash;two duties.</p>
+
+<p>His mother's emotion had moved him as no angry words could have done,
+and so moved him that at the moment he would have given up Cate or any
+one to console her.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, yes, mother, <i>fach</i>; Cate is a nice girl&mdash;and we are very good
+friends, the best of friends; but you need not be afraid; I am not going
+to bring her, or any one else whatever, to disturb you, indeed no.'</p>
+
+<p>If there was a mental reservation, 'at least not just yet,' the words
+were unspoken.</p>
+
+<p>And so, with a kiss of peace between mother and son, the disturbing
+spirit was laid at rest.</p>
+
+<p>At rest&mdash;that was, on the surface&mdash;and for the time being.</p>
+
+<p>True to his promise, and with an unappreciated effort, Rhys confined his
+attentions to Cate to the walk home from church, and was apparently less
+desirous to loiter with her in the rear of her parents. With commendable
+self-repression&mdash;seeing that his own inclination ran counter to his
+filial bond&mdash;he found occupation on the farm when otherwise he might
+have had an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span> errand that should take him across the shallow brook and
+past the weaver's cottage. Or, if he had really business that way, he
+showed less disposition to linger at open door or window.</p>
+
+<p>Cate resented this with pettishness, and the transference of her winning
+smiles to Robert, the young brother of Elain Lloyd, until the coolness
+became coldness mingled with pique, and the two passed each other at
+church or on the road with affected indifference.</p>
+
+<p>Had there been an absolute quarrel, it might have spent itself in
+reproaches, or been made up when the storm-cloud had passed, but this
+unexplained reserve went on for months and months, and the breach
+continued open.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Edwards ought to have been satisfied with the result of her
+interference, and for a time she was. But somehow the temper of Rhys had
+not improved. His assertion of mastership became more pronounced. He and
+William came into frequent collision as the weeks and months rounded
+into years, and the harmony of the household was disturbed. Jonet
+appealed to her mother against his dictatorship, and even Davy roused
+from his passivity and objected 'to be ordered about like a hired
+labourer.'</p>
+
+<p>There was no denying that Brookside Farm had materially improved under
+the new system of cropping and manuring Evan Evans had introduced, or
+that half the farmers in the parish had begun to plant potatoes since
+the root had proved so profitable there. Then<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span> there was land under
+cultivation that had formerly lain waste, and Mrs. Edwards was no longer
+in dread of the rent-day, or of Mr. Pryse, let him scowl as he would.</p>
+
+<p>She was always ready to give Evan the credit, and to pay him well for
+his services. But her eldest son, having profited by the man's
+instructions through a succession of years, began to think himself wiser
+than his teacher, and either argued against or disapproved most of his
+suggestions, whether for the cultivation of the land or the treatment of
+the stock. Rhys had been a mere boy when Evan came upon the farm, and
+the others quite children. It was scarcely likely that he who had seen
+them grow up was to submit to the young fellow's rule as if their ages
+were reversed.</p>
+
+<p>Night after night, when Evan and Ales sat up together courting after the
+rest were in bed, as was the old custom, he would talk over some fresh
+slight or indignity received from Rhys, and declare his intention to
+quit the farm and get married at the next yearly hirings.</p>
+
+<p>''Deed, and it is not that I would like to be doing Mrs. Edwards an ill
+turn, in taking you away before Jonet is old enough to supply your
+place, in some sort, Ales, <i>fach</i>, or in going and leaving Rhys to do as
+he likes; but I am too old to be ordered about and taught my business by
+him, whatever. His good mother did never be doing it&mdash;and it's time we
+was be thinking of that little cottage at Castella, with the nice bit of
+land that would serve for a pig and a cow. We would soon<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span> be wanting
+another field and another cow, Ales, and we could have your mother over
+from Caerphilly to live with us&mdash;yes, indeed.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, indeed, Evan; but I do be thinking Jonet do not be strong or tall
+enough to lift the dasher of the big churn, and it would come hard on
+Mrs. Edwards if she did be having to make the butter come. We do better
+be waiting a bit longer, or there's Rhys would be bringing Cate Griffith
+here to plague his mother's heart; yes, sure.'</p>
+
+<p>And so from time to time it was proposed, and from time to time put off,
+Evan growing more and more dissatisfied at being thrust into the
+background, until, at length, when nearly three more years had spun
+their uneven thread, Ales consented to quit Brookside for the cottage at
+Castella, and Mrs. Edwards, weary of adjusting differences, endeavoured
+to persuade herself that now her sons and her daughter were growing up
+around her, they should be able to manage well without them, and,
+indeed, save something in food and wages.</p>
+
+<p>At the first announcement of their decision, Rhys brisked up
+wonderfully. He shook Evan by the hand as if there had never been a
+difference between them, and congratulated him on his sensible choice,
+and on his prospect of happiness, with quite friendly interest.</p>
+
+<p>William was the only one at all depressed by the proposed changes. Evan
+and Ales had frequently stood between him and overbearing Rhys; he had
+become attached to them, and felt he should lose two good friends when
+they married and went away. So there was a note of regret in his
+congratulations.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The thatched cottage at Castella was taken, duly whitewashed within and
+without, and the earthen floor relaid and left to harden. But Evan had
+promised Ales that she should have glass windows, and for these, and for
+his farming implements, he would have to make a journey to Cardiff. He
+had engaged a local carpenter to make a bed, a wooden settle, a table,
+and platter shelves. Ales herself had a pretty fair collection of useful
+articles in the shape of pots, bowls, and mugs, stowed away in the barn,
+having added to her store whenever the packman came his rounds. And she
+had, besides, a goodly pair of thick blankets, of which she was not a
+little proud, having spun the wool in spare hours when her other work
+was done, to say nothing of flannel and linsey-woolsey for wedding
+garments&mdash;under-linen was then and there of no account. Mrs. Edwards had
+promised Ales a new felt hat and a shawl for the auspicious occasion,
+and they bade fair to make a good start according to the ideas then
+prevailing. It would be thought little of nowadays, when art has found
+its way into the humblest abodes. But what had never been known or heard
+of could not be missed, and the absolute wants of nature are really very
+few.</p>
+
+<p>As their yearly servitude happened to terminate alike at Martinmas, Mrs.
+Edwards kindly proposed their continuance on the farm whilst Ales
+completed some needful preparations, and Evan made his important journey
+to Cardiff. The wedding was to take place soon after his return, for the
+Rev. John Smith had been notified, and read out the banns, for the first
+time, on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span> the last Sunday in September, the faithful pair looking down
+and blushing crimson as the eyes of the whole congregation turned
+towards them.</p>
+
+<p>They left the church together, feeling half-married, nothing doubting
+that the ceremony would be completed three weeks later.</p>
+
+<p>But they had calculated without Mr. Pryse.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>CHAPTER XIV.</span> <span class="smaller">WHERE IS EVAN?</span></h2>
+
+<p>The difference between a full-face portrait and a profile is not so
+great as the different aspect the same individual may present to
+different people. To his noble employer, Mr. Pryse was the very
+beau-ideal of a shrewd business man,&mdash;clear-headed, active, and
+indefatigable in his interests and that of the large estate under his
+control,&mdash;a man on whom he could rely, for dealing conscientiously alike
+with himself and his tenants, in his absence.</p>
+
+<p>Those tenants saw only a hard, grasping, unscrupulous agent, who
+extorted high rents, made no allowance for bad seasons or failing crops,
+and who stifled complaints with an extra turn of the screw. They knew
+that all repairs and improvements, made at their own cost, would be
+wrested to the advantage of the noble landowner in the long-run, and
+were disheartened. There was an unwhisperable suspicion afloat that
+these said repairs went down as deductions from rents in the accounts
+submitted to his lord; but who ever had a chance of overhauling those
+ac<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span>counts, or questioning crafty Mr. Pryse's unimpeachable integrity?</p>
+
+<p>And about the time when William Edwards first found his way to
+Caerphilly Castle, which was in the year after George II. ascended the
+throne, the first faint breaths of a graver suspicion were wafted
+northwards, from Cardiff, in unaccountable and mysterious undertones.</p>
+
+<p>Cardiff, now a flourishing and busy seaport, was then, in spite of its
+great castle, but a small, mean, and unimportant town, hardly to be
+called a port, its ancient prestige having fallen away like its gates
+and walls.</p>
+
+<p>But about this period Mr. Pryse ceased to collect his lord's rents
+regularly at Caerphilly, and required that they should be brought to his
+office in Cardiff. This was a woful grievance to the bulk of the
+tenants, especially to elderly or infirm persons, or others remote from
+the county town. Had his lordship been at the Castle, no doubt his irate
+tenants would have sought his presence in a body, and made common cause
+against the common oppressor; but no such opportunity occurred.</p>
+
+<p>Neighbours who dreaded the toil of a nineteen or twenty miles' journey
+along bad roads in bad weather, with Mr. Pryse at the end, and as
+wearisome a return, would meet and agree to trust the bravest of the
+party with the separate rents of two or three, having no fear of robbery
+by the way, whilst so many other travellers would be fallen in with, all
+bent on the same errand.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Some of these adventurous wights, who had never been so far as Cardiff
+in their lives before, brought back the news, either gathered on the
+spot or on the road, that a strange craft had begun to frequent the
+river, and to anchor off the old sea-wall. It was said that the vessel
+had been a privateer during the wars of the previous reign, and that
+although she came thither ostensibly for coal from his lordship's
+collieries, and Mr. Pryse was in close communication with the captain,
+there was something rather mysterious about her cargo.</p>
+
+<div class="center"><a name="i165.jpg" id="i165.jpg"></a><img src="images/i165.jpg" width='433' height='700' alt="THERE WAS SOMETHING RATHER MYSTERIOUS ABOUT HER CARGO" /></div>
+
+<p class="bold">THERE WAS SOMETHING RATHER MYSTERIOUS ABOUT HER CARGO.<br />
+&mdash;<i>See page 164.</i></p>
+
+<p>It was darkly hinted that the barrels which came pannier-wise on long
+strings of horses from the Caerphilly colliery laden with coal, and were
+hauled on board to be emptied, were not returned empty, but, when again
+slung across the backs of the patient beasts waiting on the old quay,
+seemed no lighter than before; and knowing ones surmised, from the care
+with which they were handled, that smaller kegs were slipped inside the
+open coal barrels. At all events, it was whispered that the teamsters
+lingered long at roadside inns, and that some of them struck into
+by-ways instead of making direct for the colliery with their empties.
+And it was certain that foreign spirits could be procured by the
+initiated where only <i>cwrw da</i> or cider had been hitherto obtainable.</p>
+
+<p>This had been going on for three years when Evan, the
+bridegroom-expectant, prepared for his journey to Cardiff, whence he
+proposed to bring Ales her golden wedding-ring, as well as a number of
+small articles&mdash;not <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span>included in the 'furnishing list' of cumbrous
+goods&mdash;to be ferried across the river for after-conveyance to his new
+cottage.</p>
+
+<p>To Mrs. Edwards the enforced journey to Cardiff for the payment of rent
+had been a trouble and a grievance. She had not cared to send hot-headed
+Rhys by himself into a town which she pictured as full of temptations
+for young men, neither had she cared to go thither alone. Twice had she
+taken her son with her; once she had made the toilsome journey in
+company with Owen Griffith; at other times she had entrusted him with
+the rent-money. But now that Evan was bent thither on business of his
+own, her natural thrift suggested the employment of him as her deputy,
+so as to save the toil of the journey, and innkeeper's charges for
+herself and her beast.</p>
+
+<p>Owen Griffith, too, was glad of a trustworthy substitute; so that when
+Evan kissed Ales, and shook hands with the rest as he bestrode good old
+Breint at the farmhouse gate, he carried a goodly sum under his new
+frieze riding-coat, in one pocket or other, nearly all the savings of
+Ales, in addition to his own, and the two rents.</p>
+
+<p>His departure was quite an event. Owen Griffith and Cate had walked up
+the hill to hand him the money and see him off, though the hour was
+early, and a drizzling rain had begun to fall. But rain was no new thing
+among the mountains, and nobody cared for that, though, doubtless, they
+would have preferred fair weather as more auspicious.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>However, Ales flung an old shoe after him, and called out&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'For luck, Evan!'</p>
+
+<p>He looked back over his shoulder to nod his thanks in reply; whereupon
+she threw her apron over her head and ran into the house ready to cry
+because he had 'spoiled his luck' by looking back.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Edwards, too, would have been better pleased had he gone on with
+face set forward, but she cried, 'God keep him, and bring him safe
+back!' as if to counteract the untoward prognostic. Yet a cloud was
+gathering on her own brow, for though Owen Griffith walked beside the
+horse down the stony incline, Cate remained leaning against the stone
+gate-post talking earnestly with Rhys, the flush on her countenance
+deepening as he bent his head and lowered his voice to meet her ear
+only.</p>
+
+<p>'The bold-faced huzzie!' the mother ejaculated to herself, as she turned
+to go indoors. 'Can she not let Ales get out of the house before she be
+coming a-seeking Rhys to worm herself in! Sure, and she do be in a
+mighty hurry to make up the old quarrel, and secure Rhys, and Owen do be
+as bad as his girl. But Ales is not gone yet!' she jerked out
+half-aloud, then checked herself, wondering what could have put those
+ill-timed words into her head.</p>
+
+<p>She was mistaken. Cate Griffith was not quite so bold as she imagined.
+The quarrel had been made up some weeks, and, what was more, made up by
+Rhys, with a plain-spoken offer to make her his wife when Ales was
+married and gone away.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>What he had been saying, as Evan rode away down hill, was singularly
+enough, 'We shall not have long to wait now, Cate, darling. Ales will
+soon be gone, and mother will be missing her so much she will be glad to
+see me bring so clever and smart a wife home to fill the vacant place.
+Jonet could not do it. No, really! We shall not have long to be waiting,
+Cate, <i>fach</i>.'</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<div>'The best laid schemes o' mice an' men</div>
+<div class="i8">Gang aft agley.'</div>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Centuries before Burns crystallised the sentiment into verse its
+profound truth had been established. Who, besides Noah and his family,
+calculated on the Deluge?</p>
+
+<p>Were the tears Ales shed, when her long-loved Evan turned his head,
+premonitory of another deluge?</p>
+
+<p>She was a strong, healthy young woman, not a puling sentimentalist
+afflicted with 'nerves.' She might well cover her face, ashamed of her
+starting tears, when he would be back with her in four days&mdash;or five, at
+the furthest!</p>
+
+<p>Yet she was unaccountably restless those days. The outdoor work of the
+farm went on pretty much as usual, though the weather was unsettled.
+Rhys and Davy were thrashing and winnowing in the barn, and William,
+endeavouring to do the work of two, fed and foddered the cattle, and
+took the place of Ales at the churn, whilst she washed and ironed, and
+put little finishing touches to her simple wedding<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span> finery, sighing,
+every now and again, for the Evan she missed every hour of the day. When
+candles were lit, and at meal-times, the blank caused by the absence of
+his smiling face and good-humoured observation, was felt by all, from
+Mrs. Edwards down to William.</p>
+
+<p>And somehow, as the days went by, Jane Edwards began to share the
+fidgetiness of Ales, and, when the fourth passed, and the fifth wore
+slowly away, could not help frequent ejaculations, such as, 'It's time
+Evan was here!' 'What do be keeping Evan so long?' 'Sure to goodness
+nothing's gone wrong!' Ales growing still and white, with a strange fear
+that began to creep about her heart.</p>
+
+<p>Evan had gone away on the Monday morning. Ere nightfall on Friday,
+William slipped out and hurried to the ford, as if to meet him, passing
+Owen Griffith at the foot of the hill, on his way to the farm to express
+his own surprise at the messenger's delay.</p>
+
+<p>William waited and waited, but there was no sign of Evan. He got back to
+hear Griffith questioning Ales as to the various business her sweetheart
+had on hand, the conclusion being that he had not been able to make all
+his purchases, or get them conveyed to Castella, as readily as he had
+calculated, and that he must be allowed another day.</p>
+
+<p>But Saturday came and went without a sign of the traveller, and Ales
+seemed to feel the alarm of all in her own aching heart.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Neither Evan nor Ales was at church on the Sunday to hear the banns read
+the second time.</p>
+
+<p>But people were there to testify that Evan Evans had reached Cardiff in
+safety, and had been seen to enter the office of Mr. Pryse.</p>
+
+<p>On that, Owen Griffith and Mrs. Edwards breathed more freely. Their
+fears that he had been waylaid and robbed were set at rest. It was clear
+his own affairs had alone detained him.</p>
+
+<p>William, on his own inspiriting, had betaken himself to Caerphilly, and
+brought Ales back the comforting news that her Evan had carried the
+basket of butter and cheese to her old mother, and arranged for her
+removal to Castella with them.</p>
+
+<p>So far all was right. But when another week went by, and no Evan came to
+claim her, or to bring the rent receipts, the heart of Ales sank lower
+and lower; every whisper in the house was suggestive of doubt, and
+pierced her bosom like a stab.</p>
+
+<p>Owen Griffith was there nightly making fresh inquiries, often bringing
+Cate along with him, when Ales' heart was wrung with undertoned
+suspicions of her true love's fidelity&mdash;not to say his honesty.</p>
+
+<p>At the three weeks' end, when the poor tortured girl had resolved on
+walking all the way to Cardiff, to set doubt at rest, the climax came.</p>
+
+<p>It came like a thunderbolt, in the person of Mr. Pryse, to make an
+authoritative demand for the half-year's rent, then overdue.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It was in vain Mrs. Edwards declared it had been paid; that she had sent
+the money by Evan Evans.</p>
+
+<p>'In that case you will have the receipt. Produce it,' said he, with a
+sneer.</p>
+
+<p>'I cannot,' replied she, in much perplexity. 'Evan has not yet returned.
+But he was seen to enter your office; yes, indeed!'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh yes, he did come to my office to pay your neighbour Owen Griffith's
+rent, and to beg a fortnight's grace for you. I have been good enough to
+give you three weeks, and now I <i>must</i> have the rent&mdash;one way or other.'</p>
+
+<p>The evil smile of triumph on his wicked old face, as he said this, was
+lost on Mrs. Edwards in her consternation.</p>
+
+<p>'Beg <i>what</i>? I did want no fortnight's grace. I did send the golden
+guineas!'</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Pryse's thin lip curled. 'Then your man kept them. And it is rather
+strange he should pay Griffith's rent if he meant to make off with
+yours. There must be lying and dishonesty somewhere.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, indeed,' broke from Ales, in a passion of indignant wrath. 'But
+not from my mistress or Evan Evans; they do both be God-fearing and
+true.'</p>
+
+<p>An ominous scowl drew down the brows under the English three-cornered
+hat.</p>
+
+<p>'Silence, you impudent jade, or I'll have you cast into jail for your
+vile insinuations. Wait until your <i>honest</i> Evan comes back before you
+venture to asperse<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span> his lordship's deputy.' And he raised his
+riding-whip as if to strike her.</p>
+
+<p>Rhys had come upon the scene in the midst of this altercation, brought
+thither by a word from Lewis, who had seen the agent ride up the hill,
+with a sinister smile upon his face, and a ruffianly fellow in his rear.</p>
+
+<p>At once the hot-blooded young farmer, in a smock-frock showing many an
+earthy stain, interposed between his mother's faithful domestic and the
+steward, unawed by the gold lace or ruffles visible under the open
+riding-coat.</p>
+
+<p>'Nay, nay, we don't take whips to women in Eglwysilan, Mr. Pryse. What
+is all this uproar about? And what do be your business here, sir?'</p>
+
+<p>His mother attempted an explanation. Ales had shrunk back overawed.</p>
+
+<p>'I have come for the unpaid rent, and the costs attending this
+application,' Mr. Pryse thrust in, heedless of Rhys' disclaimer that
+'nothing was owing'; 'and, as no cash appears to be forthcoming, I take
+possession of the farm in the name of his lordship, and leave this man
+in charge of the premises, and I warn you against removing stock or
+stone. Take the inventory, Morgan'&mdash;to the man who had edged himself
+into the kitchen, and now put on a truculent air.</p>
+
+<p>William had come rushing in from the potato-field, but he stopped short,
+as much paralysed as his elders.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>His mother was the first to break the spell.</p>
+
+<p>'Paid or unpaid,' she cried, with the dignity of truth and honesty,
+'that wretch shall take no inventory here, whatever. I do not be without
+the means to pay your demand, though I protest that it is unjust, and
+will have to be returned to me when Evan returns with the receipt, look
+you.'</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, <i>when he does</i>. But you may take my word for it, the bird has flown
+away with your golden feathers, and is far enough from Wales by this
+time.'</p>
+
+<p>And again the sinister smile lighted the evil face, much as if he had
+good reason for knowing that Evan was far away, and that his word might
+therefore <i>be</i> taken.</p>
+
+<p>'I am glad to see you are so well provided,' he added, as the widow
+proceeded to count out upon the table the sum demanded, leaving still a
+nest-egg in the grey stocking-foot. 'Your farm must be flourishing, and
+I herewith give you notice, in the presence of my man, Morgan, that your
+rent will be advanced ten pounds per annum after this date.&mdash;I will send
+you a receipt.'</p>
+
+<div class="center"><a name="i175.jpg" id="i175.jpg"></a><img src="images/i175.jpg" width='424' height='700' alt="'YOUR RENT WILL BE ADVANCED TEN POUNDS PER ANNUM AFTER
+THIS DATE, HE SAID" /></div>
+
+<p class="bold">'YOUR RENT WILL BE ADVANCED TEN POUNDS PER ANNUM AFTER<br />
+THIS DATE,' HE SAID.&mdash;<i>See page 174.</i></p>
+
+<p>'No, sir,' put in Rhys promptly, 'you will give my mother one now. I see
+your follower there has an inkhorn and paper.'</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Pryse bit his under lip, but thought well to take the hint.</p>
+
+<p>'And now, sir,' said Rhys, when he had assured himself the receipt was
+correct, 'you do be threatening<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span> to raise the rent. You cannot do that
+until the lease expires.'</p>
+
+<p>'Show me your lease,' demanded the agent loftily.</p>
+
+<p>'We can do that when necessary, sir. His lordship will be having a copy
+you can consult,' replied Rhys quite as loftily.</p>
+
+<p>And, seeing that he had a full-grown man to deal with, not a woman he
+could intimidate, Mr. Pryse turned on his heel, and mounted his horse,
+muttering something surly as he went, his disappointed functionary
+following at his heels.</p>
+
+<p>Once again he bit his nails as his horse carried him down the stony
+track, for even the coin he bore away did not cover his baffled rage at
+defeat. Presently his thin lips spread into a smile of
+self-congratulation, and his eyelids nearly met as he communed with
+himself.</p>
+
+<p>'It was lucky I did not call on Griffith for <i>his</i> rent first. I
+clinched the nail on Evan's dishonest flight in acknowledging <i>that</i>. A
+clever idea of mine his begging grace for Edwards' widow. Covers his
+call at my office. I suppose that forward jade is the woman he was going
+to marry. She will wait a long while for a husband if she waits for Evan
+Evans, look you. And as for that cock-crowing Rhys, I'll cut his comb
+before I've done with him. He shall not crow over me with impunity; no,
+indeed. I've bled the old woman pretty freely this time. She'll not get
+over it in a hurry. The farm will go to the dogs now that long-headed
+farming-man is gone. Lease, indeed! I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span> defy any power in earth or heaven
+to keep them on their farm when I am ready to turn them out. Yes,
+indeed!'</p>
+
+<p>A strong defiance <i>that</i>, Mr. Pryse, crafty and potential though you may be!</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>CHAPTER XV.</span> <span class="smaller">A STOP-GAP.</span></h2>
+
+<p>As soon as Mr. Pryse was gone, Mrs. Edwards sank down on the oaken
+settle exhausted with the conflict of disturbing thoughts, and the
+harassing scene in which she had just borne a part. The old
+stocking-foot, which had been her only possible savings bank all the
+years of her thrifty widowhood, lay, with her limp hand, in her lap, in
+a corresponding state of collapse. Only three weeks before it had been
+plump and pleasant to contemplate, a testimony to industry, and a pledge
+of future prosperity. Now, within those three short weeks, the full
+half-year's rent had been a second time withdrawn, with exorbitant costs
+in addition, and the residue had ample space to chink.</p>
+
+<p>There was a troubled aspect of careworn bewilderment on her countenance
+as she sat there, gazing abstractedly on her diminished store,
+endeavouring to reconcile the irreconcilable. And all the while Rhys was
+pacing the kitchen floor, with noisy tramp, in his wood-soled shoes,
+chafing and fuming over the cruel insolence of Mr. Pryse, as well as
+over their loss, yet wondering vaguely if there could be any truth in
+his allegations.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He did not altogether trust Mr. Pryse, but he had never had his mother's
+unbounded confidence in Evan, and, as Owen Griffith had suggested, so
+much money in his hands all at once might have proved too great a
+temptation, or he might have got drunk and lost it, and been ashamed to
+return. (But Evan did not drink.)</p>
+
+<p>Now and then a sharp, jerky expletive gave expression to his crude
+doubts and suspicions, but he could not wring from his mother any word
+to strengthen his suspicions.</p>
+
+<p>'I do not be knowing what to think, Rhys!'&mdash;''Deed, Rhys, Evan has
+served us well, and Mr. Pryse is a bad man, your father said it.'&mdash;'Yes,
+indeed, it is a serious loss, but Evan helped us to get the
+money.'&mdash;'Yes, yes, Rhys, I do be aware you have worked hard too; but
+Evan, he did teach us new ways&mdash;and&mdash;after all,' she concluded, rising
+slowly to replace the depleted stocking in the coffer, 'we may thank God
+we had the money saved, or our farm would have gone from us, and we
+should have lost everything. Think of poor Ales, and don't be letting
+her hear you.'</p>
+
+<p>Poor Ales! William had found her in the dairy, bent down over the tall
+churn, with her head on her bare brown arms, sobbing as if her heart
+would break, less for herself than the aspersion cast on her true and
+faithful Evan. She had shrunk away, not from Mr. Pryse's whip, but from
+an evil tongue and a threat that cut worse than a whip-lash.</p>
+
+<p>Prisons were horrible dens before John Howard spent<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span> his life in
+dragging their iniquities to light, and purifying their foulness. 'Jail'
+was a word to daunt the strongest, for everywhere tales were rife how
+unscrupulous power thrust innocent men within their pestilential walls
+to perish, for no crime greater than debt or unguarded words.</p>
+
+<p>William comforted in vain.</p>
+
+<p>'Jail, Willem! He said he would send me to <i>jail</i>, only for standing up
+for honest people. But he is a rogue, Willem&mdash;a bad, wicked rogue,
+Willem.' She sobbed and shuddered as she gasped out the words. 'Yes,
+'deed! it will be that cruel Mr. Pryse that do be robbing the widow of
+her money&mdash;and&mdash;and my poor Evan of his good name. Yes, sure, and me of
+my dear husband that would have been this day! Oh, Willem <i>fach</i>, my
+poor heart will be breaking.'</p>
+
+<p>'Hush, Ales dear! don't say so,' implored the sympathetic boy, laying
+his hand tenderly upon her shoulder. 'Unkind words are hard to bear, I
+know'&mdash;and he sighed&mdash;'but nobody here will think Evan took our money
+and yours, and ran away from <i>you</i>.' (He might have altered his opinion
+could he have heard through the stone wall what Rhys was saying.) 'Cheer
+up; it will all come right when Evan gets back; yes, sure.'</p>
+
+<p>Ales startled William with the quick, energetic way she flung up her
+head and spoke&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'Come back? He will not come back unless I can seek out what that wicked
+wretch has done with him.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span> Would he be so sure of it, or dare to come
+here to rob your mother&mdash;yes, to rob her&mdash;if he did not know what he had
+done to keep my Evan from me? He may have put <i>him</i> in jail to rot
+there. Oh!' (and she wrung her hands, brown and hard with honest
+toil)&mdash;'oh! or he may have had him <i>murdered</i>. He is bad enough for
+that!'</p>
+
+<p>'Hush, hush, Ales! Mr. Pryse would hardly do that; though he <i>is</i> a bad
+man, and looked, oh, so wickedly pleased when he knocked down the Tower
+of Babel I was building. I'm afraid, Ales dear, he would not stick at
+much,' William added, after a moment's cogitation.</p>
+
+<p>'Name o' goodness, boy! He would stick at nothing whatever!' she cried,
+rising to her feet, and taking her cloak from a peg in the storeroom
+outside the dairy. 'But I am off to Cardiff to find Evan, or search out
+the truth; and do you pray for me, Willem, that I may succeed, and that
+no harm may come to me before I do.'</p>
+
+<p>'Stay, stay, Ales,' exclaimed William, catching at her cloak in the
+doorway; 'you cannot go all that way on foot, and alone, or at this time
+o' day.'</p>
+
+<p>Her voice was strangely quiet and determined as she answered&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'The sun has not set. I shall reach Caerphilly before night, and can
+stay and rest with mother until morning.'</p>
+
+<p>''Deed, now, you had best be staying where you are till morning, and you
+shall have a horse to ride on. And<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span> if there is no one else to go with
+you, I will go myself, sure.'</p>
+
+<p>After some persuasion, Ales consented to the first proposition,
+absolutely declining to accept his proffered escort, saying, 'Now Evan
+be gone you cannot be spared. And, now the money be gone, you must give
+up playing with stones, and work well to keep the farm from the sly old
+fox. Ah, sure, and the fox might be glad to catch the young goose near
+his hole. No, no, Willem, <i>you</i> must not run into danger. There be no
+need to break your mother's heart as well as mine. If God speed my
+errand I shall not be alone. Better God's arm than man's army.'</p>
+
+<p>As her cloak went back to the peg, William slipped out through the
+farmyard, and was off down hill as fast as his legs would carry him.
+Davy and Jonet, returning from the potato-field where they had been
+industriously at work, undisturbed and unaware of the overwhelming
+trouble nearer home, called out to know where he was going; but if he
+heard he did not answer.</p>
+
+<p>Supper&mdash;the old frugal meal of stiff leek porridge and milk&mdash;was on the
+table cooling when he returned out of breath, and whispered to Ales, as
+she carried out the porridge-pot, that their mutual friend, Robert
+Jones, had business of his own in Cardiff, and if she would join him at
+seven in the morning, where the roads met, she could ride all the way on
+one of his team. He did not tell her all he had said to enlist his old
+friend in her service, or how heartily the turf-cutter<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span> had responded,
+or that the man's errand was chiefly on her account.</p>
+
+<p>Robert Jones knew more of 'old Pryse' than she did, and hated him as
+sincerely.</p>
+
+<p>There had been some previous talk between Ales and her old mistress
+about the young woman's continuation on the farm unless Evan returned to
+claim her.</p>
+
+<p>'I'd rather serve you for nothing than go away before Evan's good name
+was cleared, 'deed I would. And it will be cleared some day, I know it
+will, whatever some folk may think.'</p>
+
+<p>She had said this with a full heart, meaning all she proposed, but Mrs.
+Edwards was too just to accept service on such terms from a tried and
+faithful maid in her hour of deep affliction. Besides, she had a feeling
+that whilst Ales was there, well-trained and active, Rhys would have
+less excuse to bring Cate on to the hearth. Motives are always more or
+less complex.</p>
+
+<p>The objections of Mrs. Edwards to Cate Griffith certainly were so. She
+would have conceded that 'the girl was good-looking, quick of foot, and
+ready of hand,' but she would have added also, 'ready with her tongue,
+and not quite straightforward in her ways.' Then, if she must be deposed
+by her eldest son's wife, she would have been better pleased had he
+looked higher, and gone courting where there would be a little money to
+come home with the bride. Cate would have none to bring.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>With such feelings uppermost, she did not contemplate the temporary
+absence of Ales with too much favour, anxious as she was for some news
+of Evan and of her missing money.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Pryse had disorganised the work in field and house for the one day
+utterly. All was now behind-hand. She was herself upset, and a woman far
+on the wrong side of fifty does not recover her balance too readily. The
+sudden departure of Ales at this inopportune juncture was another upset.</p>
+
+<p>But she would not confess her weakness to Rhys, lest he should make it
+an excuse for bringing Cate to her assistance.</p>
+
+<p>Yesterday&mdash;Tuesday&mdash;had been baking-day. In their trouble the oven had
+been allowed to grow cool, and the dislodged terrier, who had shown a
+set of angry teeth at Mr. Pryse, had gone back to his repose underneath
+it. The barley and oatmeal for the bread lay in the brown crock, as Ales
+had left it, with the bit of last week's dough in a bowl ready to leaven
+it. Mixing, kneading, and baking was not light work, yet it must be
+done. Thoughtful Davy had again driven away the dog from his hole in the
+ash-pit, and lit the oven fire in readiness.</p>
+
+<p>Then it was <i>Wednesday</i>, the churning and butter-making day. How was she
+to bake and churn the same morning? for both required attention, and
+when once the long-handled dasher was set in motion, up and down it must
+go until the butter came, however long that might be, or all would be
+spoiled.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Jane Edwards, persistent as her children, was at her wits' end, but she
+could not call Jonet in from the field, for they were late in digging up
+the potatoes, and if the frost came before they were in the pits, the
+whole crop would be ruined.</p>
+
+<p>Then dinner had to be thought of. It was a relief to her, whilst
+kneading the mass of dough, to hear Davy scrubbing away with a ling
+besom at the dinner potatoes in the stone hollow under the spring. But
+she heard the quick voice of Rhys recalling him to his field-work, and
+the passive 'I be coming,' which marked his subjection to his elder
+brother.</p>
+
+<p>At noon, when her family came in to dine, expecting the Wednesday's meal
+of buttermilk and potatoes&mdash;still new enough to be something of a
+treat&mdash;though there was a pleasant odour of baking bread in the kitchen,
+and there were anticipations of a dough dumpling in the pot, there were
+unmistakable grumblings and sour looks because there was only fresh milk
+to go with the esculent root. (The difference is only to be estimated by
+a trial on a farm where the buttermilk is fresh.)</p>
+
+<p>Jane Edwards was overtired, and lost her temper. 'You could not expect
+me to be baking and churning at the same time,' she jerked out angrily,
+feeling already warm with her morning's work.</p>
+
+<p>Here was the opportunity Rhys had looked for.</p>
+
+<p>'You had better have had Cate here this morning to churn. Then you would
+not have been so hurried, and our dinner would not have been spoiled.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'Spoiled, indeed! I have seen the time you would all have been glad of
+hot potatoes and salt, without milk at all,' was retorted.</p>
+
+<p>William and Davy rushed to the rescue, rightly interpreting the mother's
+frown. 'I'll stay and churn for you,' they cried in a breath.</p>
+
+<p>'You'll do nothing of the kind. If those potatoes are not all in, and
+covered up, they will be ruined. There was a touch of frost this
+morning. And who's to do the milking?' said autocratic Rhys.</p>
+
+<p>Jonet and William proffered their services, only to be rebuffed. This
+was followed by a sharp altercation between the two brothers, widening
+the existing breach, and&mdash;though William, out of consideration for his
+mother, who interposed, did not bounce off and absent himself as
+usual&mdash;it ended in the despatch of Lewis with a message to Cate, and the
+speedy arrival of the girl, as if she had expected the summons.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Edwards was taking a loaf of bread out of the oven when Cate came
+in at the open door, and possibly set the harassed widow's red face down
+to the heat of the oven&mdash;not to her temper.</p>
+
+<p>'Lewis do be saying you do be wanting me to churn. I shall be glad to
+help you any way, whatever,' Cate began demurely, just as if she had not
+exchanged a syllable first with Rhys over the wall by the gateway.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, yes, sure. Mr. Pryse stopped the baking yesterday, and Ales be
+gone to Cardiff, so we are late;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span> and I must have the butter ready for
+to-morrow's market.'</p>
+
+<p>Cate had her hat off with the first words of assent; her bare feet
+tripped lightly across the stone floor. She obtained from the pot on the
+fire a pitcher of warm water, to raise the temperature of the milk, as
+deftly as Ales could have done, and presently the dasher could be heard
+plashing in the churn with regular beat, as if lifted by strong, firm
+hands.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Edwards, washing up the dinner things, sighed heavily, as if only
+half-satisfied, for a new perplexity had arisen in debating with herself
+who should go to Caerphilly market on the morrow. Whether she went or
+Rhys, she foresaw the necessity for Cate or <i>some one</i> to remain and
+take the place of Ales. She, however, did not care to leave the girl as
+her own deputy with Rhys at home to come and go at will.</p>
+
+<p>The question was still unsettled when Cate called out that the butter
+had come.</p>
+
+<p>At once Mrs. Edwards stepped into the dairy, and, as if ready for all
+contingencies, bare-legged Cate snatched up a milking-stool and pail,
+and was off, singing as she went; while the other collected the butter
+out of the churn, washed, salted, and moulded it into shape for market.</p>
+
+<p>Back she came in due time, the full pail on her head, the stool tucked
+under one arm, her knitting-pins clicking as rapidly as if she was
+unencumbered.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Edwards, moulding her butter at the dairy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span> window, could but admit
+to herself, as she watched her cross the yard with light, firm feet,
+that Rhys might have chosen worse.</p>
+
+<p>That night Cate remained on the farm. It was settled that Rhys was to
+attend Caerphilly market. He was to load the pony and sled with potatoes
+for sale&mdash;they were sure to fetch a good price, if only for seed, as
+other farmers were beginning to plant them. He himself was to go on foot
+bearing the egg-and-butter basket, since Breint, who would have carried
+all, was gone.</p>
+
+<p>Cate was up before the lark. Milking was done, breakfast ready, and she,
+bright, brisk, and clean as a new pin by the time Rhys and the rest were
+ready for the morning meal.</p>
+
+<p>She was certainly on her mettle, and Rhys could barely have reached the
+bottom of the hill before the relics of the meal were cleared away,
+fresh fire-balls added to the peat on the hearth, and she ready, as she
+told Mrs. Edwards, to take the place of Ales in the field.</p>
+
+<p>William chuckled, and rubbed his hands together with glee, when he saw
+his mother so reinforced.</p>
+
+<p>He whispered to Jonet, as she followed to pick up the roots he dug out,
+and remove the haulms, which really called for another hand.</p>
+
+<p>Jonet nodded an affirmative.</p>
+
+<p>'Mother,' he cried, 'if Cate will take the spade, you can sit still and
+remove the haulms as Jonet gathers them up. I've got some work to be
+doing that Rhys<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span> will not let me undertake. He says I don't know how,
+whatever.'</p>
+
+<p>He had thrown down his spade, and was out of the potato-field,
+overleaping a wall, before his mother had time to question or
+remonstrate.</p>
+
+<p>Evan had kept his eyes here, there, and everywhere. If the troublesome
+goats butted against a wall, and displaced a stone, he repaired the
+breach at once to prevent further damage. Rhys had been less wary, and,
+in his obstinacy, would not allow his youngest brother to see or know
+more than himself.</p>
+
+<p>Consequently, an old greybeard Billy had been allowed to make a gap in
+the garden wall, and, though driven away with a stout broom-handle when
+Ales or her mistress might be there to see, had played havoc among the
+English herbs and flowering plants she was at such pains to rear. Then
+Mr. Billy and his friends had tried their horns on the empty sty, now
+the swine were turned to feed in the autumnal woods, and had done some
+fine damage there.</p>
+
+<p>If Cate handled a spade with the skill and vigour of experience, William
+handled the unhewn stones with the inspiration of genius and long
+practice 'in play.' And he worked as if his life depended on his speed
+and skill.</p>
+
+<p>Rhys made a good market, and came home with self-satisfied complacence
+at a late hour, to sup and turn over his gains to his mother, along with
+the news of the day. But he had no chance of a private word with Cate,
+who had gone home with her father before eight<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span> o'clock, well pleased to
+have earned the honest commendation of Mrs. Edwards, in addition to the
+customary 'payment in kind.'</p>
+
+<p>Morning came, noon came, and afternoon was speeding before Rhys
+discovered that the broken-down wall and pig-stye were as whole and
+sound as when new.</p>
+
+<p>He stood before the latter in blank surprise. He had given no orders for
+the repairs.</p>
+
+<p>'Has Morgan the mason been here?' he bawled out after Jonet and William,
+who were off with milking-stools and pails.</p>
+
+<p>'No,' came quickly back over Jonet's shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>'Who has been at work here?'</p>
+
+<p>No audible answer came back this time, but, with a wondrous twinkle in
+her expressive eyes, and an unmistakable grin on her face, Jonet pointed
+with outstretched arm, in silence, to the younger brother striding on
+well in advance.</p>
+
+<p>It was a revelation to Rhys. His countenance fell. The wisdom of the
+world did not rest on his individual shoulders. He stood there amazed,
+hardly sure whether to be vexed or pleased, angry or grateful. Content
+he certainly was not. He had been slyly circumvented, and that was
+irritating, however necessary the repairs had been.</p>
+
+<p>Into the house he strode in quest of his mother. He heard her at work
+outside. Here a fresh enlightenment awaited him. She was endeavouring to
+set her garden beds in order, behind a good firm wall. Her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span> task was no
+longer hopeless; she could sing over her work.</p>
+
+<p>There was little need for Rhys to ask over again 'Who hath done this?'</p>
+
+<p>Still less need for frowns and sullen looks.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>CHAPTER XVI.</span> <span class="smaller">DISCOVERIES.</span></h2>
+
+<p>Robert Jones was a childless widower when he first picked up little
+William crying in the lane, and gave him a lift on his donkey. He was
+much older than Ales, but he was not too old to wish he had as smart and
+capable a helpmate on his own hearth, where was only his half-blind
+mother to keep all things fresh and clean. Many had been the sharp play
+of words between him and Ales during her progress from girl to woman,
+and, had not Evan come upon the scene when he did, Robert would
+certainly have made a bid for her favour.</p>
+
+<p>He was one of the first to perceive that the younger man had quite
+spoiled his chances, and was generous enough to stand on one side, and
+keep his disappointment to himself.</p>
+
+<p>So generous was he, that, instead of hailing Evan's mysterious
+disappearance with satisfaction, he stamped about and shook his fist at
+an imaginary 'old Pryse,' as he listened to William's recital, and
+proffered his services to 'poor Ales,' as if the recovery of her lost
+lover did not mean the extinction of the last spark of a chance for
+himself.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>William could not have found for Ales a better safeguard on her way, or
+a more zealous and capable assistant in her anxious quest.</p>
+
+<p>In fact, from the time they landed in Cardiff, and he found her a
+lodging with a dealer in peat, etc., who had her supplies from him, he
+took the business pretty well out of her hands, having, during their
+journey, made himself acquainted with Evan's errand and plans.</p>
+
+<p>He argued with her that a strange young woman could not go about the
+streets of a seaport town&mdash;though, apart from castle and old monastery,
+Cardiff was but a very small place in 1733&mdash;without exciting attention
+by her inquiries, and defeating her own purpose, whether Evan was
+keeping out of the way, or was kept out of the way by others, even if
+she escaped personal insult.</p>
+
+<p>Whereas he, well known, and with his customary load of peat to dispose
+of, could go from place to place and pick up, in gossip, without
+exciting the suspicion of Mr. Pryse, or any one else, facts which might
+be withheld from direct inquiry.</p>
+
+<p>And so well did he fulfil his mission that, when the last rays of the
+setting sun crimsoned the river and the fading woods of the Taff Valley
+on the Friday evening, Ales, weary and dispirited, but no longer
+ashamed, rode up the stony hillpath to the farm, on the back of good old
+Breint.</p>
+
+<p>Robert Jones had turned off towards his own home, with his team and his
+return load, after a very curious disclaimer of thanks.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Part of that load consisted of a new turf-cutting spade and a small
+glazed window for his hut. His newly-discovered need for these took him
+among dealers in hardware and carpenters, until he found what else he
+went for. He drove hard bargains, and paid in part with winter store of
+peat; but he carried away more than the dealers supposed. In the one
+place he observed a full set of implements for husbandry put aside, and
+roughly labelled, 'Evan Evans, Castella, <i>Paid</i>,' and was told they had
+so lain, 'lumbering up the place,' for fully three weeks, the buyer not
+having turned up to claim them, although he had stated he intended to
+take them up the river by boat when the tide served.</p>
+
+<p>A crusty carpenter, who had two glass windows exposed for sale, was glad
+to let one of them go as a bargain, seeing that the man for whom they
+were made in a hurry three weeks before had disappeared mysteriously,
+and not even gone back to his inn, on St. Mary's Quay, for his horse.</p>
+
+<p>That bit of information about the inn had sent the turf-cutter tramping
+across the town with his beasts, sure, at least, of much-needed rest and
+provender, all houses of the kind, in those days of horseback travel and
+pack-horse conveyance, having ample stable accommodation.</p>
+
+<p>A warm supper, more plentiful than dainty, had been supplied to him in
+the common room, odorous of tobacco-smoke, rum, <i>cwrw</i>, tar, and salt
+water.</p>
+
+<p>Presently a voice he knew hailed him from out the smoke-reek.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'Do that be you, Robert Jones? 'Deed, you're the very man to tell the
+landlord here who owns an old horse left here three weeks ago by a
+farming-man, who called himself Evan Evans, of Eglwysilan, and went off
+without paying his score, look you!'</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, how did he go off?'</p>
+
+<p>'Queerly. He said as he was going to hire a boat to carry the horse and
+some goods of his, as he was be taking to Castella, across the river in
+the morning, but he never did come back here.'</p>
+
+<p>'No,' chimed in the landlord, 'nor never did mean it, or he would not
+have been going off in the <i>Osprey's</i> boat, as he surely did.'</p>
+
+<p>''Deed no! not if he did go of his own free will,' came from a feeble
+voice in a corner; 'but I've heard as'&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'Sure, and didn't Mr. Pryse be saying he was be running off with a lot
+of money?' again struck in the landlord, drowning the words of the
+previous speaker.</p>
+
+<p>On this ensued a warm controversy, in which some dark hints were thrown
+out respecting the <i>Osprey</i>, and Mr. Pryse's connection therewith, all
+bearing on the strangeness of Evan's disappearance.</p>
+
+<p>Listening Robert Jones had come to the conclusion that the landlord was
+under Mr. Pryse's finger and thumb, and cautiously made no comment. But
+he kept his eye on the owner of the feeble voice, and, when he went out,
+followed.</p>
+
+<p>He had found the man shifty, timid, and unwilling to give an unspoken
+opinion to a stranger.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>So, too, were the tarry loungers upon the quay the next morning.</p>
+
+<p>'Evans <i>might</i> have been kidnapped and carried off against his will, the
+crew of the <i>Osprey</i> were a queer lot, look you; or he might be running
+away, as Mr. Pryse did say&mdash;they could not tell.'</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Pryse might have frozen free speech, but Robert Jones had noted
+shrugs and nods more expressive than words. Then the application of two
+silver pennies to the palm of a timorous lad opened his lips to tell
+that he had seen a strange man, looking for a big boat, hustled into the
+boat of the <i>Osprey</i>, and held down whilst the crew rowed out to the
+schooner in the bay. And, when Ales herself discovered that Evan had
+bought both a wedding-ring and a brooch for her, the conclusion was
+obvious.</p>
+
+<p>She had shed her tears in the three weeks gone. She returned to the farm
+in tearless, but gnawing, uncertainty as to her Evan's fate, yet proud
+of her ability to clear his honest name.</p>
+
+<p>She was somewhat incoherent in her story, but Robert Jones an hour or so
+later backed it up with fuller details, and his own convictions.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, yes, indeed, Evan Evans did go about his business like an honest
+man. There be still the spades and things he paid for, and I have a
+glass window he left his God-penny<a name="FNanchor_12_12" id="FNanchor_12_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a> on. He would have kept all the
+money if he intended running away. No, no, he did be paying all the
+rent, Mrs. Edwards, whatever Mr. Pryse do say.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>''Deed, it do seem like it. But why should he be "pressed" on board?'
+she queried. 'There be no war now.'</p>
+
+<p>'Why should any wicked deed be done?' put in Ales. 'A bad man do have
+his reasons ready.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, yes, and one evil head moves many evil hands, Mrs. Edwards,' added
+Jones, 'if, as is hinted by them as daren't speak their minds, Mr. Pryse
+do have dealings with the gruff captain of the <i>Osprey</i> for something
+fiery besides his lordship's coal. Then, smuggling a stout-limbed fellow
+or two on board might be winked at, if it was no part of the bargain.
+And I do be telling Ales not to think they would kill Evan. They want
+living men for sailors, not dead ones.'</p>
+
+<p>'Then God may bring him back to me some time, and I will pray day and
+night for him. Yes, yes, though the day be long it will have an evening.
+And let not Mr. Pryse be thinking to escape&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<div>"The later that God's vengeance is,</div>
+<div>The heavier far and sorer 'tis,"'</div>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>broke from Ales, her eyes and cheeks kindling as with a spirit of
+prophecy, as she hurried from the kitchen into the dark storeroom beyond
+to contend with her own agony in secret.</p>
+
+<p>Then came a reckoning with Jones for Breint's keep at the inn (Ales had
+cleared Evan's score as a matter of honour), and whilst settling that
+with Mrs. Edwards, it occurred to him that her sons had pursued their
+occupations in uncommon silence during this statement of facts and
+fancies, especially Rhys, who seemed more interested<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span> in disentangling
+the locks of wool he was combing by the fireside (his comb-pot on the
+hearth) than on disentangling what seemed an unaccountable plot against
+his mother's tried and faithful servant.</p>
+
+<p>William, knitting a long blue stocking in the opposite corner, had put
+in an occasional word, but even he did not appear at ease.</p>
+
+<p>Davy's wooden soles had been heard clattering outside along with sounds
+indicative of more care for recovered Breint than the absent Evan.</p>
+
+<p>He walked in from the farmyard just in time for the supper of hot
+leek-porridge Jonet poured scalding hot into their bowls, not forgetting
+one for the turf-cutter, who sat down without apology, for the odour was
+appetising.</p>
+
+<p>Again he noticed that Rhys and William preserved a sullen silence
+towards each other, and wondered what fresh quarrel there had been.</p>
+
+<p>When supper was over, and he rose to depart, William followed him.</p>
+
+<p>No sooner were they out of earshot than the boy began to lay bare his
+grievance in tones of wounded self-esteem.</p>
+
+<p>'Look you,' said he, 'since Evan went, Old Billy has been suffered to
+butt at the walls, and never a stone had been put back to keep him from
+the styes, till they did be like to tumble down. So yesterday, while
+Rhys was at market, I did work till the sweat poured off me, and mended
+them all, thinking I would let Rhys see what I could do. And since he
+found out this afternoon what<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span> I had been doing, he has never spoken one
+word to me, whatever. If I had knocked the walls down he could not have
+looked more surly. It's enough to make one run away, it is! And if it
+was not for mother and Jonet, I would be running away, 'deed I would.'</p>
+
+<p>'Hush, Willem, don't be saying that; runaway sons make sorrowful
+mothers. Don't be thinking of doing anything rash, anything you cannot
+be asking the blessing of Almighty God upon. Perhaps you neglected
+something Rhys expected done, of more consequence than a dry wall.'</p>
+
+<p>'Sure, Cate Griffith did be digging the potatoes. She could not build up
+walls. I do believe Rhys is vexed just because mother was so well
+pleased, and began to put her garden right that Billy and the pigs had
+spoiled. Rhys would have liked Evan better if mother had found fault
+with him.'</p>
+
+<p>The boy's bitter attempt at self-justification was checked by his mature
+friend.</p>
+
+<p>'Faults are thick where love is thin, Willem. You are only a boy and
+your brother is a man. It is not for you to go your own way and disobey
+wilfully. But I will look at your handiwork in the morning, when I bring
+the lime for the land; and, perhaps, be saying a word to bring Rhys to
+reason. Good-night, Willem. Go to bed peacefully. And don't be building
+up a wall of stony thoughts against your brother, don't.'</p>
+
+<p>These were his parting words to the chafing lad, as they stood by the
+gateway, but, as he descended the hill in the full light of the moon, he
+said to himself, 'Better<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span> repair a breach between brothers than build up
+a wall to repel a fancied enemy.'</p>
+
+<p>It was in this spirit the man addressed himself to Rhys the next
+morning, whilst helping Lewis to transfer the lime from the panniers to
+the freshly-dug potato ground, and the unturned stubble of oats and
+barley. He said he had observed signs of discontent between the brothers
+the previous night, and on other occasions, and expressed a desire to
+know if any real cause for discord existed. It was so very serious a
+thing for brothers in one house to bicker and quarrel; small differences
+were so liable to grow into great ones, even to enmity and hatred.</p>
+
+<p>Rhys listened uneasily, fidgeted, puckered his brows, and at last jerked
+out, 'Look you, Robert Jones, that boy Willem is the plague of my life.
+He will not take orders from me. And who else should give orders if I am
+to manage the farm? Davy and Jonet obey. But he do think of nothing but
+picking up stones and building; and that will not make a good farmer or
+till the land, or pay the rent. He was mending walls on Thursday when he
+should have been digging potatoes. We may thank Cate Griffith they were
+all up and safe from last night's frost. She took up the spade he threw
+down.'</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, well, Rhys, all the world are not farmers. Cate's father is a
+weaver. I cut turf, and sell lime and culm and aught else, to turn an
+honest penny. But let me see what sort of a young builder you have on
+the farm. You know I do be going about the country and use my eyes, so I
+know good walls from bad ones.'</p>
+
+<p>'Sure, they do be well enough for a boy's work,' half<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span> contemptuously
+admitted Rhys, whilst pointing out the repairs in walls and sties.</p>
+
+<p>Jones gave them more than a cursory examination.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, yes, Rhys. But they do be "well enough" for a <i>man's</i> work, that
+they do. The stones are well fitted and firm. You owe the boy thanks,
+not blame. Don't you be for thwarting Willem, or you may be spoiling a
+good builder to make a poor farmer. A sound fence is a farmer's friend.
+Let him keep your fences sound, and he will help to pay the rent, 'deed
+he will.'</p>
+
+<p>'I don't see how.'</p>
+
+<p>'Your eyes are blinded by prejudice, man. Would not a stray cow, or hog,
+or pony that found a gap ready, do more damage to crops in a day than
+you could repair in a month?'</p>
+
+<p>This was not to be gainsaid. But when the turf-cutter urged William's
+claim to just consideration and recognition of his service, the pride of
+Rhys was up in alarm for his own authority.</p>
+
+<p>'He is such a boy,' he argued.</p>
+
+<p>'No more a boy than you were, Rhys, when you first tried to fill your
+dead father's place, and told your mother you were "old enough to do
+your duty." Have you forgotten that? Or are you <i>younger</i> than you were
+then?'</p>
+
+<p>Whether he had forgotten, or did not choose to remember, he turned off
+with a light laugh, and the remark, 'I'm not doing my duty in idling
+here.'</p>
+
+<p>But conscience is a mill that grinds at all hours, and unsought, and
+Robert Jones had set the wheels in motion.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'Willem,' said the peat-cutter to the depressed boy, just before he
+cracked his whip to set his unloaded team in motion downhill, 'if you
+build up your life as well as you have built up your garden wall, you'll
+do. It is firm and compact, and the stones are set evenly together. But
+strife between brothers is a bad foundation to build upon. And it is not
+for a lad of your age to be unruly, and oppose the brother who has so
+long been working for all of you. There is time enough before you to
+build walls or churches, or what you will; but you have none to lose if
+you would bind the bond of brotherhood around you, or lay the foundation
+of a Christian life, look you.'</p>
+
+<p>William's eyes brightened, and his chest expanded under his Saturday's
+sullied smock-frock, as his early friend commended his handiwork, for</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<div>'Praise is pleasanter than honey,'</div>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>and hitherto he had not been cloyed with the sweetmeat. But his aspect
+changed. He did not relish the bitter dose of advice mingled with the
+honey, for his whole soul was in rebellion.</p>
+
+<p>Yet, swift and sharp as the man's whip crack, memory brought back those
+other words to the same purport the stranger, Mr. Morris, had spoken
+long ago, and every hoof-beat of mule or ass seemed to hammer them into
+his brain.</p>
+
+<p>Far down the steep hill were beasts and driver before William roused
+from his reverie, and rushed after them, shouting as he went. The man
+turned.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'What is it, Willem?'</p>
+
+<p>'Can you teach me to count?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, up to a hundred, in tens. That is the way I count my peat.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, I can be counting that as I knit.'</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, then, if you do be wanting to reckon properly, and do sums with
+figures, you had better be asking Owen Griffith; he do be clever at
+that. I will speak to him for you.'</p>
+
+<p>''Deed, I would be so glad.'</p>
+
+<p>Robert Jones was as good as his word. Owen's cottage was not on his
+direct road, but he did not mind going out of his way to do a kindness.</p>
+
+<p>The weaver had just taken a finished web of blue flannel out of his
+loom, and sat smoking a long pipe on the bench outside.</p>
+
+<p>After the first salutation, the turf-cutter began by saying, 'Have you
+seen the dry wall Willem Edwards have been building up so cleverly?'</p>
+
+<p>'Sure to goodness, no. Yet he did always have a notion that way. I have
+heard Rhys and Cate be laughing over it many a time.'</p>
+
+<p>''Deed, yes, Owen, but it's not to be laughed at. That boy have a head,
+look you. I've seen walls built and mended less securely by old hands
+before now.'</p>
+
+<p>'Sure now! You don't say so? I wish he would come and repair mine. It's
+been tumbling down, stone by stone, waiting till Morgan the mason did be
+coming round.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'Well, you ask Willem. And if you would be offering to teach him to
+reckon up with figures, he would be proud and pleased to build it up.
+'Deed he would. He do just be asking me to teach him. But you go looking
+at that wall of his. Willem do want encouraging, not laughing at. He
+will build up more than a broken-down wall some day.&mdash;Shall you be
+wanting peat or lime next week?'</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, yes; and if you think Willem can mend the wall you can bring a sled
+of stones as well.'</p>
+
+<p>The next day, on the way from church, Owen Griffith got William by his
+side, and set him counting the trees by the wayside, and the sheep on
+the hills, as preliminary to lessons in arithmetic, but nothing said he
+of any broken walls.</p>
+
+<p>He left that for the afternoon, when he and Cate walked up to the farm,
+ostensibly to learn what news Ales had brought from Cardiff.</p>
+
+<p>Over all that he shook his head, uncertain what to make of it, though he
+said, 'It do look bad, it do.'</p>
+
+<p>But there was nothing uncertain in his exclamation of surprise at the
+firmly repaired walls Mrs. Edwards showed so proudly as the work of her
+youngest son.</p>
+
+<p>It led to the open proposal that William should restore his fences to
+condition in return for lessons in arithmetic, and to Mrs. Edwards'
+consent to that use of his time.</p>
+
+<p>Rhys had strolled away with Cate to talk over<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span> the deferred prospect of
+their marriage, and so did not hear of this arrangement until
+afterwards, when, for reasons of his own, he thought best to keep the
+peace.</p>
+
+<p>It was the small beginning of greater things.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTE:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_12_12" id="Footnote_12_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a> God-penny&mdash;a deposit.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>CHAPTER XVII.</span> <span class="smaller">PROPER TOOLS.</span></h2>
+
+<p>Ales had resumed her work on the farm, but not with the spirit and
+vivacity of old. She had been wont to sing over her work, and had a
+store of old Welsh ballads in her memory. But the song-bird mourned in
+silence for the mate torn away so ruthlessly, and, as weeks and months
+and years rolled on in the same drear monotony of hopelessness, her
+heart grew colder and heavier, and her prayers became as the very
+wailings of despair.</p>
+
+<p>It cut her to the soul to hear Rhys grumbling, as he did, at the money
+filched from them to pay, not only the rent Evan should have paid, but
+the heavy costs of a seizure in addition; and she more than once
+resolved to quit the farm when the year expired.</p>
+
+<p>Second thoughts, however, suggested that nothing would suit the young
+man better, and his very grumbling might have that end in view; for,
+once rid of her, he could seek the necessary consent to bring in a wife
+with a good grace.</p>
+
+<p>He had not improved in temper, certainly. It had irritated him to hear
+William lauded for the very pro<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span>clivities he had held of so small
+account, nay, turned into ridicule.</p>
+
+<p>It was no satisfaction to have a brother so much younger competent to
+enlarge and raise the walls of the sheepfold, as he did, before a second
+winter set in. What though a mason's charges were saved, was not the
+saving at the greater cost of his own supremacy?</p>
+
+<p>And in the long winter nights when he and Davy sorted fleeces or combed
+the wool, or tended the dye-pot on the fire; when Ales taught Jonet to
+twirl the flaxen thread drawn from the distaff, so as to set the spindle
+dancing on the floor to the tune of the mother's industrious
+spinning-wheel, how it tried his patience to see William making figures
+and calculations on a board, with chalk or ruddle by the light of the
+candle, whilst the knitting-pins, which should have been earning money,
+lay idle by his side.</p>
+
+<p>There are men ready to perform generous acts, who are flagrantly unjust,
+but cannot see it. Robert Jones had urged Rhys Edwards to 'be just.' He
+should have said 'be generous,' and Rhys might have responded to the
+appeal. He resented the imputation of injustice.</p>
+
+<p>Yet he denied to his brother the meed of praise his service merited; he
+begrudged him the time to acquire the common rules of simple arithmetic;
+perhaps because he felt it was a step to something beyond his own
+attainment. He counted not the money saved in masonry as money earned.
+He might have been content had William been as passively submissive as
+Davy and Jonet,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span> but he found in him a spirit boldly daring to cope with
+his own, and it stung him to find the boy upheld in his resistance.</p>
+
+<p>So years crept on. The third winter passed, the snows melted, the roads
+were free for traffic, the river sang a p&aelig;an to approaching spring, the
+pink and brown buds were bursting into green, song birds were flitting
+and fluttering about the eaves and boughs, all was life and activity
+upon the farm. The <i>Osprey</i> had never again put into port at Cardiff,
+where Mr. Pryse bit his nails and snarled more cantankerously than ever,
+and nothing had been heard of Evan. Ales lost heart, she did not sing
+with the birds; but William, no longer snubbed, worked on the farm with
+the best, until another barrier rose between himself and Rhys, in the
+shape of another stone wall.</p>
+
+<p>Hedges have now superseded walls in many parts of Glamorganshire; but at
+the date of this narrative, the fields and lanes were universally
+bounded by what are known as '<i>dry walls</i>,' and still they serve as
+fences on the uplands.</p>
+
+<p>By 'dry walls' are to be understood walls built without mortar or
+cement, of irregular, unhewn flagstones, so put together, so wedged in
+one with another, as to stand firm where a cemented wall might give way
+exposed to the high winds of those elevated regions, the very crevices
+allowing the blasts to pass through, and so reduce the pressure on the
+mass. Such are the walls in Craven and other parts of northern England.</p>
+
+<p>Yet it is no uncommon thing for the coping-stones to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span> be hurled away in
+a fierce gale, or for large portions of such walls to be blown down, as
+came to pass on Brookside Farm that gusty spring.</p>
+
+<p>Here was an opportunity for William to turn his talent to account and
+save his mother's pocket, as be sure he did.</p>
+
+<p>So far, so good. Rhys made no objection, and Mrs. Edwards was well
+pleased. Davy had begun to feel proud of his brother.</p>
+
+<p>But it so happened that Robert Jones, whose window had long before been
+fitted in by William, came to seek his services, not merely to repair a
+breach, but to enclose a portion of ground as a stone yard.</p>
+
+<p>Rhys, then engaged sowing barley on last year's turnip ground, looked as
+black as two thunder-clouds rolled into one, and without mincing his
+words gave a decided refusal.</p>
+
+<p>'Willem is not a public stonemason, Robert Jones. He is now dibbling in
+the potato-sets, and cannot be spared. You asked me to "be just"; do you
+think you are just in seeking to draw him away from the farm at this
+busy season?' and with a very strong oath he swore 'Willem should <i>not</i>
+build walls for him or any one else.'</p>
+
+<p>But the leader of the peat-cutter's team happened to carry a resonant
+bell, as did the leading beast of all packhorse teams, in order to warn
+other teamsters, or the drivers of cattle or carriages, that the narrow
+roadway was blocked, and one or the other must wait in the nearest
+broadened space provided as a refuge until the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span> advancing team had
+passed and left the road clear. Such open grassy spots may still be seen
+in England's narrow by-ways, and there gipsies make their camps. Nay,
+even in the heart of busy London, old Paternoster Row is so provided
+with spaces where two carts may pass abreast.</p>
+
+<p>The bell, set ringing through the clear March air with every motion of
+the mule's head, brought William leaping over runnel, ridge and furrow,
+and dividing fence to greet his old and true friend.</p>
+
+<p>The voice of Rhys, ever loud and authoritative, now raised and vehement,
+reached William as he came bounding along.</p>
+
+<p>'Who says I shall not build walls for any one?' he cried. 'I <i>will</i>, and
+no one here shall stop me. Do you think I mean to dig and delve all my
+life, and be labourer to you?'</p>
+
+<p>'Labourer to me, you jackanapes? Do you think your intermittent labour
+pays for your sustenance? But if you quit the farm this day to go
+wall-building, you may quit it altogether. I am not going to wear my
+life away to support you in idleness. Cyphering at night, piling up
+stones by day, rambling off to Caerphilly Castle when you should be at
+work&mdash;what sort of labour do you call that?'</p>
+
+<p>'Head-work; of no account with you. But, look you, I'll go and come as I
+please, and build walls if I please. And I don't be owning you for
+master. If we can but find the old lease, it may turn out the youngest
+son is heir and not the eldest. But let me tell you that for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span> the toss
+up of a silver penny I'd quit the farm for ever, only I know that's what
+you do be wanting. You would be glad to get either me or Ales out to
+make room for Cate. But while we stay, mother do be mistress, and shall
+be.'</p>
+
+<p>For a moment Rhys seemed dumbfounded. Then he sprang upon his brother,
+and grappled with him as if he would have borne him to the earth.</p>
+
+<p>The fifteen years lad was thick set and sturdy, and stood his ground
+well, but he was no match for the man of more toughened frame and
+indurated muscle.</p>
+
+<p>It would have gone badly with the younger had not the turf-cutter
+interposed, and, by sheer force, thrust them apart.</p>
+
+<p>'What!' cried he, 'are you two brothers so jealous of each other you
+would strive like Cain and Abel? Shame on you both! Would you bring
+death and sorrow on your mother's hearth once more?'</p>
+
+<p>They stood panting, but abashed, as he proceeded&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'Surely, what with one loss after another&mdash;the rent money unaccounted
+for when Evan disappeared, the cruel bill for costs, the raising of the
+rent, the missing lease&mdash;the poor widow do be passing through a sea of
+trouble, with cares enough to drown her, without you two, who should be
+her help and comfort, adding to the load. Are you not ashamed?'</p>
+
+<p>'It be Rhys' fault!' 'It be Willem's fault!' they cried simultaneously,
+alike moved by the reference to their mother, whom they loved with deep
+affection.</p>
+
+<p>'You are alike to blame. Each one has some reason<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span> on his side; but, let
+me tell you, lads, it is always the one most in the wrong who is the
+last to give in. Now, shake hands and be friends. I came here thinking
+to be doing you all a service, for it would pay better for Willem to be
+building walls than doing common field-work. But I don't be wanting to
+breed dissension between you, so I will be getting Morgan the stonemason
+to build my wall.'</p>
+
+<p>William's lips were set close.</p>
+
+<p>The brothers looked at each other; Rhys wavered. The reference to
+'better pay' had struck a vibrating chord in his breast.</p>
+
+<p>'If'&mdash;he began.</p>
+
+<p>'<i>I</i> will build your wall, look you, pay or no pay, Robert Jones. But
+you will not be wanting me to-day, whatever?'</p>
+
+<p>'No, not until next week; but fair work must have fair pay. Yet, what
+say you, Rhys?'</p>
+
+<p>Here was a loophole for Rhys to slip through. 'Oh, indeed, if you don't
+be wanting to call him off his work to-day or to-morrow, it may be
+managed.'</p>
+
+<p>So it was amicably settled, and when the turf-cutter went his way,
+William was on his knees helping Rhys to gather up what he could of the
+barley spilled from his seed-wallet during their unbrotherly struggle.</p>
+
+<p>It so happened that the following Sunday the vicar took for his text, 2
+Peter i. 5, 6, and 7, dwelling especially on the last&mdash;'<i>And to
+godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity</i>'&mdash;in
+such manner that both Rhys and William took it to heart, imagining<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span> he
+had heard of their antagonism, and was addressing his sermon especially
+to them. No doubt there were others in the congregation to whom the
+sermon might apply with equal force, but they two held their heads down,
+as if to hide the crimson flush that mounted to the roots of their brown
+hair, and fidgeted uneasily upon their high-backed seat.</p>
+
+<p>Anyway that was the end of their open strife. And when, at the close of
+another week, William carried home to his mother, in good hard coin,
+more than double the hire of a field-labourer, reserving a very small
+portion for himself, there was nothing said by way of objection to his
+craze for building, or his efforts to attain a more complete knowledge
+of arithmetical calculation.</p>
+
+<p>Few persons ever found their way to Brookside Farm except on business,
+fewer still cared to ask who kept the fences and outhouses in such good
+order; and though Owen Griffith's house was by the roadside, ordinary
+passers-by were not likely to stop and put such questions, even if they
+gave the walls a second glance.</p>
+
+<p>But Robert Jones had become a thriving man of business. He had increased
+the number of his team, and still travelled the country round with culm
+and peat, and clay and lime. There was scarcely a farmer or cottager on
+all Eglwysilan mountain, or near it, who did not on occasion call at his
+place, either to carry away some of his necessary commodities, or to
+leave a special order. And these were the very men to whom fences were
+of importance, the very men to know a good, compact wall when they saw
+it.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Jones had a long head. He had a double motive when he began to deal in
+broken flagstone, and invited William Edwards to build up an enclosing
+wall for his stores. He knew the wall would attract attention, bring the
+self-taught young mason into notice, and help to sell his stone.</p>
+
+<p>The event justified his far-seeing calculations. Before another spring
+brought William's sixteenth birthday, he was known to be the best
+builder of dry walls within a wide area, and his services were in
+frequent request.</p>
+
+<p>There was no more snubbing under his mother's roof, for with a very
+small reserve for personal needs, he poured all his earnings into her
+lap as to a common store; and rising in estimation, he was thanked with
+heartfelt satisfaction, so material and so necessary were added gains to
+meet increased demands, extortionate Mr. Pryse, sneering and grinning at
+their inability to confront him with their lease, having raised the rent
+a second time, and threatened still harsher measures.</p>
+
+<p>And no one now lent a more willing hand to any work upon the farm, when
+not otherwise employed, than thoughtful William, who saw with pain the
+streaks of white interlacing his mother's once black hair.</p>
+
+<p>But William Edwards was not content to be a mere builder of dry walls.
+He looked at the masonry of the church and of Caerphilly Castle, and was
+conscious he had much to learn. How to enlarge his fund of knowledge was
+a problem. But he was not easily daunted.</p>
+
+<p>One Sunday he observed a cow and sundry sheep<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span> trespassing on the
+vicar's glebe, having taken a wide gap in the wall as an invitation. No
+sooner was service concluded than he marched up boldly to the vicar,
+reminded him of promised help, explained his desire to master higher
+forms of arithmetic than Owen Griffith had ability to teach, and
+modestly offered to repair the glebe wall if the vicar would accept his
+services. The Rev. John Smith smiled, and assented readily. William set
+to work upon the wall the next day, going into the vicarage parlour when
+candles were lighted, and making the best use of the privilege accorded.
+Long after the wall shut out four-footed intruders, William might be
+seen on his way to the vicarage, after a hard day's work, once or twice
+a week, a bit of candle stuck in a hollowed turnip serving to light him
+home when there was no moon.</p>
+
+<p>It was about this time a gleam of stronger light shone on his darkness.</p>
+
+<p>He was engaged enclosing a fresh field for a farmer about two miles from
+Caerphilly. Raising his head, and giving his arms a stretch, his
+attention was arrested by a noise there was no mistaking. There was a
+blacksmith's shop by the roadside, and almost in front of it a load of
+stones was being dumped down from a cart, or what then answered to the
+name in that wild region. It was little more than a sled, low to the
+ground, but running on broad wheels or rollers of solid wood, girthed
+with iron bands and drawn by four horses.</p>
+
+<p>His curiosity was excited. A group of working men were there. What were
+they about to do? One man<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span> was measuring the ground, the others, doffing
+their coats, rolled up their shirt sleeves, and also set to work.</p>
+
+<p>A trench was dug along the lines marked out. And now two mules came up
+with laden panniers. William overleapt his own low wall and drew nearer
+to observe, his pulses beating rapidly. He was coming on the secret he
+had so long panted to learn.</p>
+
+<p>A heap of sand was emptied on the ground, and hollowed out like a huge
+shallow bowl. Into this was poured lime from the other panniers, and
+then a man carrying a pail brought water from a wayside runnel and
+poured it on the lime. There was no need to tell whence rose that volume
+of steam to one who whitewashed his mother's farm buildings so
+repeatedly. But the stirring up and mixing of mortar was new to him. And
+what was that soft fluff shaken out of a bag when the steam began to
+subside? It was something with which the wind made free and blew about
+almost like thistle-down&mdash;ay, almost into his own face. He caught a
+loosened tuft; examined it. It could be nothing but cow's hair. So that
+was how the mortar was bound together!</p>
+
+<p>Anon began a chipping and ringing of steel upon stone, that was, and was
+not, new to him.</p>
+
+<p>Nearer and nearer he drew, yet afraid of exciting observation. He knew
+his own purpose, and felt as if the busy masons would know it too, and
+drive him away before his object was attained.</p>
+
+<p>He watched the mason chip and dress the stones to shape until the one
+fitted its fellows, and they were laid<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span> side by side in a bed of mortar
+within the trench, and fresh mortar spread on these with a trowel to
+receive a second layer of stones for the foundation.</p>
+
+<p>Then he went back to his own dry-wall building. But never had wall taken
+him so long before, for day by day he watched the masons at their work,
+and day by day learned something fresh&mdash;even the uses of square and
+plummet&mdash;until a well-built farrier's shed adjoined the blacksmith's
+forge, with smoothly-rounded pillars bearing up the roof.</p>
+
+<p>He had learned the secret of the masons' tools, primarily the hammer,
+with which the stones were chipped and dressed. Unlike his own, it was
+steeled at <i>both</i> ends, one end shaped like an axe.</p>
+
+<p>From a smith in Caerphilly he obtained just such another before the week
+was out.</p>
+
+<p>Brief apprenticeship! No premium paid! No years of servitude to a
+master! God had gifted him with peculiar faculties. He had a special
+bias; he had also intelligence, perseverance, and determination to
+succeed. He had achieved so far a measure of success.</p>
+
+<p>He began to speculate on success he could not measure.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>CHAPTER XVIII.</span> <span class="smaller">IN THE GRIP OF A STRONG HAND.</span></h2>
+
+<p>Five years had come and gone since that sad October when Evan Evans rode
+away from Brookside Farm buoyant with hope and expectation, yet from
+that hour no word or sign of his existence, no token of his death, had
+come to set feverish doubt at rest.</p>
+
+<p>They had been five worrying and wearying years. For although William
+brought home his larger earnings to the common store, and his brothers
+did their best upon the farm, and there had been none but ordinary
+losses, the abstracted money had never been replaced. Mr. Pryse had
+prevented that with his extortionate raising of the rent. Then he had
+taken to visiting the farm at intervals, making free comments with
+sarcastic flings at Rhys, and cutting allusions to the still-missing
+Evans, and to the missing lease, which he insisted the man must have
+carried off, if it ever existed.</p>
+
+<p>Ales had much to bear through it all. Every doubtful or stinging
+allusion to Evan cut her like a knife. But deep in her heart, as in a
+well of truth and faith, she cherished a belief that in God's good time
+he would come back to comfort her, and confound his traducers.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span> And so
+year after year she kept her place in spite of the black looks of Rhys
+and Cate.</p>
+
+<p>Robert Jones would gladly have made another home for her. But Ales only
+shook her head, and said with a heavy sigh: 'What would I do if Evan
+came back? No, better remain for ever unmarried than for ever marred.'
+And finding her constancy unshaken, the man brought an orphan niece into
+his cottage to care for himself and his mother, a tacit confession that
+his suit was hopeless.</p>
+
+<p>Some such proverbial answer Mrs. Edwards gave to Rhys about this time
+when he urged how much better it would be to have Cate always at hand as
+his wife, than to be paying for her frequent services, when William was
+away wall-building, as was often the case. 'Besides, mother, you cannot
+be expecting to keep Jonet always at home,' said he. 'Thomas Williams is
+beginning to talk to her, and it is clear he do be thinking of taking a
+wife, and he five years younger than myself, look you.'</p>
+
+<p>'It will take a long while thinking, if he do be thinking of Jonet for a
+wife, and him not even got his workshop built,' replied the mother with
+decision. 'Your patience will hardly hold out till Jonet makes way for
+Cate. But, indeed, there do be no room here for a wife. And Cate must
+know it.'</p>
+
+<p>'We might make room, if you were willing,' he persisted. 'We need only
+be clearing out the fleeces, pots, pans, and other lumber, and shut in
+the place at the back with a bit of wall and a door, and there will be a
+room as big as the dairy.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'Indeed, and where would you be for putting what you call "lumber"?'</p>
+
+<p>Rhys hesitated, pushed his fingers through his loose brown hair two or
+three times, as if to rake up an idea. What he called lumber were
+household goods and utensils in common request, fire-balls and turf
+included.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, sure, I can be talking to Willem about that;' and he strode away,
+with bent brows, leaving his mother to finish her whitewashing of the
+cottage front, and to digest his suggestion at leisure.</p>
+
+<p>The Thomas Williams to whom Rhys had referred was the second son of the
+carpenter who had laughed in his sleeve at Mrs. Edwards' new notion of
+housing and scrubbing her swine, but who had ceased to laugh at
+improvements that had brought him in work all round. In fact, he had
+enclosed his workshop and glazed his small windows, not to be behind his
+precocious son.</p>
+
+<p>That son, Thomas Williams, was fully five years older than William
+Edwards, but the two had been drawn together from the fact that both
+indulged in original ideas, and smarted under a want of appreciation at
+home.</p>
+
+<p>Thus it happened that when Rhys gave his mother a hint that Thomas
+Williams was making up to Jonet, his own brother was engaged in rearing
+a workshop for the young carpenter in close proximity to the premises of
+Robert Jones in the Aber Valley. At home he had been told he was too
+young to set up for himself, but he had served his seven years'
+apprenticeship to his father, had saved a little money, and was not so
+young as the self-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span>taught mason, who was making <i>his</i> first experiment
+in house-building for him.</p>
+
+<p>On his father's hearth he was scoffed at for trusting so much as the
+raising of a workshop to the untried hands of a mere boy. So of his
+plans or his ulterior intentions he said little there, desirous to
+escape inevitable sneers and discouragement.</p>
+
+<p>It was at Brookside Farm by the fireside after dark, the two young
+fellows had laid their heads together, and matured their plans, long
+before they were put into operation, and it was there the original idea
+of a workshop and living-room behind developed into something more.</p>
+
+<p>It was there, night after night, whilst Rhys was down the hill at the
+weaver's, that Thomas Williams had unsuspected opportunities for seeing
+Jonet's fitness for wifehood. True, he had noticed her bright black eyes
+and hair, her clear complexion and pleasing smile, her neat attire and
+dapper figure, times out of mind on Sundays, and had thought how lithe
+and supple were her movements, how modest her demeanour. But it was on
+her mother's hearth, whether knitting, or spinning from her distaff,
+chatting all the while with one or other, and making much of her
+brothers, or when helping Ales to prepare supper, that he saw how ready
+she was to make herself useful and agreeable as well.</p>
+
+<p>So it was that, out of the first design for a mere workshop, gradually a
+plan for the construction of a whole house shaped itself.</p>
+
+<p>William Edwards was short and sturdy; his round<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span> face had become square,
+his forehead broad, his jaw inclined to be massive; his keen grey eyes
+were deep set and thoughtful, his nose was large with broad nostrils,
+his dark brown hair crisp as a crown&mdash;at seventeen a premature man of
+thought and action, with strong, capable hands.</p>
+
+<p>He was a thorough contrast to his friend, who was tall and slight, had a
+fair clear skin, with a tinge of healthy colour in his cheeks, and a
+crop of wavy auburn hair; in short, a handsome young fellow.</p>
+
+<p>Handsome enough to attract Jonet, and more than Jonet; but not to lead
+Mrs. Edwards to countenance too much intimacy until assured that neither
+her son nor his friend had miscalculated his skill or its results.</p>
+
+<p>Certainly William Edwards had not.</p>
+
+<p>Passers-by, or people having business with the turf-cutter, lingered to
+watch the young mason at his work, as the walls gradually rose above the
+foundations, until firm, even, and compact as if laid by a master-hand,
+with a couple of rooms in the rear and an undivided attic over all, the
+whole stood fair to view. But even before Thomas Williams had laid the
+last rafter, or the thatched roof was on, or the casements were glazed,
+the owner might be seen at his bench plying plane or saw to make the
+whole substantial and complete.</p>
+
+<p>The situation had been well selected. Proximity to Robert Jones'
+premises was as good as a modern advertisement to both young builders.
+Then it was on the main road to church, and was certain to arrest
+attention and inquiry.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Rhys stood before it the Sunday after completion, along with Cate and
+her father, feeling something like pride in his self-taught brother for
+the first time. He had taken a critical survey of all, back and front,
+when he heard Robert Jones calling out to him from his own low doorway&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'Look you there now! What do you think of that? Didn't I be telling you
+not to spoil a good builder to make a bad farmer?'</p>
+
+<p>'Indeed you did, and I think you were right. But where he did be
+learning it all does be puzzling me.'</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, well, you wait and see. The little one will be the big one in the
+end.'</p>
+
+<p>The rest of the family had come up, Mrs. Edwards between William and
+Davy, Jonet having dropped behind with handsome Thomas Williams.</p>
+
+<p>Congratulations came thick and fast, even from strange voices.</p>
+
+<p>Rhys grasped his brother by the hand, and pressed it warmly.</p>
+
+<p>'I did never be thinking you could do this, Willem, whatever. I do be
+pleased and proud to see it.'</p>
+
+<p>''Deed, I did be knowing it long ago, and so did Robert Jones,' put in
+Owen Griffith.</p>
+
+<p>'I wish I had known it. But where did you be learning to build like
+<i>this</i>?' asked Rhys, who held his dry walls of small account.</p>
+
+<p>'Sure, and I did be studying at Caerphilly Castle, where you did be
+thinking me idling. Grand masonry does be there!' replied William.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Edwards' eyes were swimming with tears. She saw a future before her
+son, and silently she thanked God.</p>
+
+<p>'Will you like to be looking inside?' said the owner, who had unfastened
+the door and held it open whilst Mrs. Edwards and Jonet walked in.</p>
+
+<p>The floor of the front shop was already thickly carpeted with curly
+shavings, and crowded with odd pieces of oak and pine shaped and trimmed
+ready to put together, a rush basket of tools was set upon the workman's
+bench under the window, pieces of timber were reared against the bare
+walls, and there was already an air of business about the place.</p>
+
+<p>'It is all rough and bare at present,' said Thomas Williams
+apologetically. 'When the walls do be dry enough to whitewash, and
+these'&mdash;pointing to the incongruous pile upon the floor&mdash;'are made into
+stout seats and tables, and my tools do be set in order, as well as the
+house, you must be coming to look again, and rest on your way from
+church.'</p>
+
+<p>'No one will be more welcome, whatever,' he added with emphasis, and a
+covert glance at Jonet, who had her feet on a flight of narrow stone
+steps leading up aloft. Presently she came down in surprise.</p>
+
+<p>'Why, mother, look you; there is a big room overhead. What do that be
+for?'</p>
+
+<p>Thomas flushed.</p>
+
+<p>''Deed, William said it was best make the house complete at first, and
+show what we could do. Until it be wanted it will serve to keep my best
+timber dry and safe.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'But you do not be noticing how solid and substantial are the walls.'
+This to Mrs. Edwards.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, yes, sure I do! And I pray God to prosper the work of both your
+hands.'</p>
+
+<p>'Amen!' came with fervour from both young fellows, and had a loud echo
+from the peat-cutter in the rear.</p>
+
+<p>There were not lacking turned-up noses or sneering comments on the
+presumption of two untried beginners setting out so pretentiously; but
+to them the substantial building with its two floors was as a modern
+manufacturer's pattern-card, and brought commissions to one or both.</p>
+
+<p>And it frequently happened that the two were engaged to work together,
+certainly whenever Robert Jones had a chance to put in a word.</p>
+
+<p>Long before Thomas Williams had his house set in order, or its wooden
+fittings complete, the vicar paid him a visit of inspection, and with
+him a gentleman he addressed as Mr. Morris. And a very close inspection
+the latter made, sounding and measuring the walls and trying the cement.</p>
+
+<p>'Good workmanship&mdash;extremely good workmanship,' said he; 'but I expected
+no other from the boy. I shall recommend him.'</p>
+
+<p>His opinion or his recommendation must have been worth something, for,
+very shortly, William Edwards was called upon to erect another
+two-floored house of even larger dimensions, nearer to Caerphilly and to
+the farrier's shed where he had graduated in masonry.</p>
+
+<p>Previously to that, as they walked home, arm in arm together, after that
+Sunday view of the new workshop,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span> Rhys had laid before him the latest
+impediment their mother had thrown in the way of his marriage. It was
+something new for him to take counsel with William.</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, well, Rhys,' assented he, 'mother do be something unreasonable. She
+do be worse than Laban, for you have been after Cate longer than Jacob's
+whole service, and you have been a dutiful son to wait so long. I will
+soon be making a room for you somewhere&mdash;sure I will.'</p>
+
+<p>Leaving Rhys at the foot of the hill, he turned back to help his mother
+up the steep ascent, she having walked to church.</p>
+
+<p>Finding her in the best of good humours, he advocated his brother's
+cause so successfully that, by the time they were at the top, he had her
+consent to build an additional room at the chimney-end of the house,
+agreeing that, if the room were ready, the marriage might take place at
+Hollantide, or earlier, if all the crops were harvested and housed.</p>
+
+<p>'Ready, and May still blossoming?' William laughed as he collected his
+materials, and cleared sufficient ground, it seemed such a small affair.
+But before he had his wall two feet high came the unexpected commission
+for a two-storeyed house, also required in a given time, and put a stop
+to his brotherly arrangement.</p>
+
+<p>It was a proud moment for the young builder, though Rhys looked blank,
+and all was not clear before himself.</p>
+
+<p>'Never mind, Rhys,' said he; 'your place shall be ready in time. I wish
+I was as sure of the money to carry on the other work. I mean to manage
+it, but I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span> do not like to be asking mother for my money back again.
+Jones has offered to find the stone, and wait for payment, and Williams
+the woodwork; but there will be labourers' wages, and other things. I
+must think it out.'</p>
+
+<p>He had not occasion to waste much time on 'thinks.' Mother and brothers
+agreed that the bulk of his contributions to the general purse should be
+regarded as a reserve fund for his use, nothing doubting it would be
+mutually advantageous.</p>
+
+<p>So his new undertaking was planned out, begun, and carried to a
+successful issue, to the joint profit of himself and friends, and the
+satisfaction of his employer. Not, however, without one or two hitches,
+and a considerable expenditure of thought, for he was at once architect
+and builder; and surely never one so young and self-taught before. But I
+am telling fact and not fable.</p>
+
+<p>In those days, if people worked long hours, it was not at express speed.
+There was no 'scamping,' for durability was a desideratum.</p>
+
+<p>It was therefore late in September before William could spare time to
+add another stone to the wall at Brookside, and even then he had to lend
+a hand in the harvest-field.</p>
+
+<p>He had, however, passed his word to Rhys, and there was no fear that he
+would break it. His promise meant performance, by hook or by crook.</p>
+
+<p>Besides, it was no great matter, and very soon Thomas Williams had the
+joists and other woodwork ready on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span> the ground, and was fitting in the
+framework of the doorway, for the young mason, mounted on a plank raised
+upon sods, was adjusting the crowning stones of the new gable with an
+aspect of self-content.</p>
+
+<p>It was close upon the dinner-hour, and Cate, as impatient as Rhys, had
+hurried to the front of the house along with Jonet to note progress, and
+clapped her hands in glee to find the masonry so near completion.</p>
+
+<p>At that juncture William cast his eyes downhill. A sharp 'Ugh!'
+indicative of annoyance burst from him. 'Here do be coming that wicked
+old Pryse,' he cried. 'What do he be wanting here?'</p>
+
+<p>The uphill road wound round to the farmyard in the rear. A stile
+admitted to the enclosure in front and a narrow gap farther away. Here,
+at the stile, he alighted from his horse, throwing the reins over the
+side-post.</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, sure,' said he, with the straight-lipped smile which he made so
+offensive, 'things must be prospering with you. It is well to have a
+builder in the family when the house is too small. Some one must be
+going to venture on a wife; or perhaps Mrs. Edwards has grown weary of
+her widowhood?'</p>
+
+<p>How evil was the look in those half-closed eyes of his, as William
+answered from his platform&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'Rhys is going to be married, sir. Have you anything to say against
+that?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, dear, no. Rhys, indeed! Let me congratulate him on the auspicious
+prospect, and on the prosperity it indicates. His lordship will be
+delighted, I am sure, to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span> hear of these additions to the farm and the
+family.' And as he spoke he rubbed one skinny hand over the other
+slowly&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<div>'Washing his hands with invisible soap,</div>
+<div class="i1">In imperceptible water'&mdash;</div>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>with apparent satisfaction born of anything but goodwill.</p>
+
+<p>Rhys and Mrs. Edwards coming upon the scene, the same mock salutations
+were offered, the sneer being so palpable that Jonet involuntarily edged
+nearer to Thomas Williams, and Cate caught at the arm of Rhys as if for
+protection.</p>
+
+<p>For once he declined their proffered hospitality, contenting himself
+with a horn of cider. A mountain farmer's vegetarian meal was little to
+his liking, and he knew that meat was reserved for Sundays and rare
+festivals. Then mounting his horse he went trotting over the farm,
+reckoning up the value of crops stacked or standing, and of the sheep
+and cows pastured on the mountain-side, as if the produce had been his
+own, not the farmer's.</p>
+
+<p>His presence cast a temporary gloom over the family. He was regarded as
+a bird of ill-omen.</p>
+
+<p>But the cloud speedily dispersed, and the building went merrily on. By
+the beginning of October the rafters were on, and William had begun to
+thatch it in, and was considering the desirability of re-thatching the
+whole house, when their plans had a sudden check before Martinmas.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>William, mounted on a ladder, was taking a bundle of fresh straw from
+his young labourer, when a red-faced man, whom he seemed to remember
+unpleasantly, came boldly over the stile, took a folded paper from his
+greasy pocket, and demanded insolently to see 'Jane Edwards, the tenant
+at will.'</p>
+
+<p>He was the truculent official messenger of Mr. Pryse, and the paper he
+thrust into the widow's trembling hand was a formal 'notice of
+ejectment' from the farm!</p>
+
+<p>The skinny hand of Mr. Pryse had closed upon the family with a vice-like
+grip.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>CHAPTER XIX.</span> <span class="smaller">WITH GRANDFATHER'S GOLD.</span></h2>
+
+<p>Had the paper handed to Mrs. Edwards contained a burning fuse to set the
+whole homestead ablaze and lay it in ashes, it could scarcely have
+created greater consternation.</p>
+
+<p>The grin on the bearer's face and his mother's shriek of dismay brought
+William down from his ladder in haste, and sent the lad John Llwyd off
+at racing speed to carry the alarm of unknown calamity to the rest.</p>
+
+<p>One by one came Rhys, Davy, and Jonet rushing into the house, to find
+their mother, with her apron thrown over her head, rocking herself to
+and fro on the old grandfather's armchair, wringing her hands and
+moaning in the extremity of distress, that to them seemed inexplicable.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh that I should be living to see this day! Oh that things should ever
+be coming to this pass! Sure to goodness it will be the death of me!'</p>
+
+<p>William, by her side, was endeavouring to master the legal jargon of a
+document in his hands; while Ales, with arms and apron wet from the
+washtub, was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span> bending over her mistress, and doing her rough best to
+check the outburst of grief after her own pithy fashion.</p>
+
+<p>'Name o' goodness, Jane Edwards, you do be taking on as if Mr. Pryse was
+God Almighty! Sure the battle's not lost before it do be fought. 'Deed,
+you couldn't fret worse if Rhys had been carried off like my Evan. Look
+to God, mistress; His breath can shrivel up Mr. Pryse like a leaf in an
+east wind.'</p>
+
+<p>But the shock was too new for immediate consolation. Philosophy is no
+plaister for a raw wound.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile William had tossed the 'notice' across the table to Rhys, with
+the remark, on which he set his strong, white teeth, 'The skinny old
+kite has whetted his beak, and do be thinking to tear us with his
+talons; but, if I don't be cutting his claws for him before the year
+runs out, my name's not William Edwards.'</p>
+
+<p>'The best way to do that would be to find the lease,' put in Davy. 'I
+wonder where grandfather did be hiding it?'</p>
+
+<p>'I'll find it out, if I pull the old house down, stone by stone,' cried
+William passionately; adding in another tone, 'Look you here, mother,
+crying will not be mending a broken egg. Let us show the old wretch a
+bold front, and who knows but God may help us to find the lease and keep
+the farm in spite of him. But, if not, in twelve months' time <i>I</i> may be
+making a home for you, farm or no farm.'</p>
+
+<p>Rhys alone had not spoken. Jonet had crept up to her mother, and,
+kneeling by her side, whispered<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span> comforting words, whilst tears ran down
+her own cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>Rhys dashed the paper down on the floor and strode out, a suppressed cry
+of bitter anguish bursting from him. He could not ask Cate to marry now,
+with ruin hanging over them! He almost reeled against the doorway of the
+newly-erected addition, and groaned aloud. He felt as if the blow was
+directed against him&mdash;him above all.</p>
+
+<p>'I did be so happy,' he murmured, 'and now&mdash;Oh, Cate, dear Cate, how can
+I be breaking the terrible news to you!'</p>
+
+<p>Davy had followed Rhys.</p>
+
+<p>''Deed, I will be for telling Cate, if it will be saving you pain,' he
+suggested quietly. 'Perhaps she may be taking it best from me.'</p>
+
+<p>'Sure, Davy, you was always a good fellow,' was all the assent of Rhys.
+But without turning round he stretched out his broad brown hand to meet
+the warm clasp of Davy, who, in another minute, was on his way steadily
+downhill.</p>
+
+<p>Probably both brothers anticipated hot-tempered tantrums from Cate
+Griffiths at the sudden change of her matrimonial prospects. But for
+once it was the mother, and not the girl, who flew into a rage at what
+she regarded as the final defeat of long-laid schemes.</p>
+
+<p>For a moment Cate seemed dazed. 'Poor Rhys!' was all she said; 'he will
+need some one to comfort him, and your mother too.'</p>
+
+<p>Ten minutes later Rhys, leaning stupidly against the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span> door-frame where
+Davy had left him, felt a pair of warm arms steal round his neck, and a
+loving voice say, 'Poor Rhys! What do it matter? There do be other farms
+to be had. We shall not lose each other if we do be waiting. You have
+got a lease <i>somewhere</i> that shall upset old Pryse. And look you, Rhys,
+neither Pryse nor his lordship have leases of their lives. He may not
+live to turn you out. Do not be disheartened. Trust God, do your duty,
+and leave the rest to Him!'</p>
+
+<p>Poor Rhys! The very first words of sympathy had sunk into his soul. He
+had never known Cate so loving in all his life. She had been wayward,
+teasing, and tantalising, but never thus. His trial sank to nothing in
+the new discovery. He clasped her close, and took courage. Half his fear
+had been to lose her.</p>
+
+<p>A loud summons from Ales recalled Rhys to neglected duties, and
+barefooted Cate sped homewards to have a sharp-tongued contest with her
+mother, who renewed an old cry that 'Cate needn't be spoiling her market
+for Rhys Edwards, whatever.'</p>
+
+<p>The news spread rapidly that Mrs. Edwards had notice to quit the farm
+next Michaelmas, and commiseration was general.</p>
+
+<p>But when Jane Edwards, supported by Rhys and Owen Griffith, walked into
+Mr. Pryse's apartment at the inn on the 9th of October, Caerphilly Fair
+Day, neither she nor Rhys made any allusion to the notice received or
+looked in any way daunted.</p>
+
+<p>She put down her money, and asked for her receipt.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The agent eyed her curiously, but in the face of two witnesses he
+required to guard his words.</p>
+
+<p>As Mrs. Edwards examined carefully the receipt he gave, he remarked,
+with his sinister smile&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'His lordship requires you to pay due regard to the ejectment notice
+served upon you. He cannot permit <i>tenants at will</i> to build on his land
+without express permission.'</p>
+
+<p>'<i>If</i> his lordship do be knowing anything of that ejectment notice, he
+will know that it be just so much waste paper. Good-day, sir.'</p>
+
+<p>He opened his eyes wide for once, and stared at her, but without another
+word Mrs. Edwards left the room, followed by Rhys and Griffith, who had
+previously paid his rent.</p>
+
+<p>'You touched him there,' said they both in a breath, when clear of the
+inn.</p>
+
+<p>They would have been sure of it had they seen him start from his seat
+and grasp the arms of his chair, exclaiming, as he sank back again&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'Confound the woman! What did she mean? Is the lease found? And what
+meant her innuendo anent his lordship's knowledge. They cannot
+have&mdash;but&mdash;no, no!' And there he sat biting his long nails in
+perplexity, oblivious of frequent knocks at the door, or tenants waiting
+in the passage for their turn.</p>
+
+<p>No, the lease had not been found, but something else had, from which
+Mrs. Edwards derived her courage.</p>
+
+<p>In the first outpouring of her indignation she had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span> forbidden William to
+proceed with his thatching. But he was equally persistent.</p>
+
+<p>'What, mother!' he cried hotly, 'leave that bit of a place unroofed to
+be telling old Pryse that we be frightened by his dirty paper? Not I.
+And it's my belief his lordship does not know one word about it,
+whatever.'</p>
+
+<p>The words dropped from his lips like an inspiration. His mother caught
+at them.</p>
+
+<p>William, taking the bit between his teeth, was up his ladder, with John
+Llwyd in attendance, before she had fully mastered the probabilities of
+the case.</p>
+
+<p>It was not a long business, for considering the state of affairs he was
+not so foolhardy as to re-roof the whole farm. But to make a neat job of
+it he had to clear away the worn and jagged edges of the old thatch to
+make an even joining.</p>
+
+<p>As he did so, and created a gap, something fell down inside the kitchen
+with a thud and a rattle.</p>
+
+<p>'Name o' goodness, what's that?' cried Ales from the fireplace, almost
+losing her hold of the iron pot she was hanging on the hook. 'Do you be
+going to bring the house about our ears?'</p>
+
+<p>Another moment she sent up a scream, 'It's found! It's found! Thank
+God!'</p>
+
+<p>But before she could lay hands upon the prize William was in the house,
+and had picked up a small oak box covered with dust and mould.</p>
+
+<p>The scream of Ales brought Mrs. Edwards in from the farmyard with an
+apron full of eggs that fell with a smash to the floor.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>What mattered the eggs? The sight of that curious old box drove eggs out
+of mind!</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, goodness, Willem! That was your grandfather's box! Many a hunt your
+poor dear father did have for that box. Open it, quick!'</p>
+
+<p>'It's locked, mother. I cannot force the hasp, it do fit so tight.'</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, yes, I do forget. I do have kept the key all these years. Here,
+here, do make haste!'</p>
+
+<p>How her fingers trembled as she brought from her deep pocket the big key
+of the coffer, and the tiny one so well preserved for&mdash;this.</p>
+
+<p>A folded paper, and a multitude of coins!</p>
+
+<p>John Llwyd peeping in at the door, roughly driven off by Ales, like
+another winged-footed Mercury, flew over field and fallow, echoing her
+cry, 'It's found! It's found!'</p>
+
+<p>Before the paper could be read, or the coins counted, there were other
+echoes besides William's to the mother's pious 'Thanks be to God!'</p>
+
+<p>The paper was a <i>will</i>, duly signed and witnessed, by which William
+David Edwards bequeathed to his son William, and to his eldest son Rhys
+after him, the lease of the farm, and all property in the land held
+under that lease, with whatever stock and crops might be thereon at his
+decease. And further left whatever moneys might be found along with that
+will for the use of that son, William, should necessity arise, but laid
+a charge upon him not to diminish but to add to the store, to be divided
+between David and any future children<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span> born to the said William and Jane
+Edwards, in order to help them also to make a start in life.</p>
+
+<p>What a shout went up when the '<i>lease</i>' was named! It became no longer a
+disputed fact. Here was legal proof that might serve them in good stead
+if the lease itself could not be found. No doubt the careful
+grandfather&mdash;who had died suddenly in a fit&mdash;had secreted that as well
+as the will just come to light. That might turn up any day.</p>
+
+<p>Hope was in the ascendant. And now for the coins. Some&mdash;the five-pound
+and two-pound pieces of William and Mary&mdash;were unknown to the young men,
+though coined during the manhood of the hoarder; but the remainder,
+guineas and half-guineas from the mints alike of William and Queen Anne,
+had not yet dropped out of circulation, if seldom seen. Except four
+tarnished crown pieces, there was no silver.</p>
+
+<p>It was a golden inheritance to feast their eyes upon. In all one hundred
+and forty-five pounds. Such a store had never met their sight before.</p>
+
+<p>Yet, with the new possession came the dread of robbers. Ales counselled
+silence.</p>
+
+<p>''Deed, and it's best the teeth guard the tongue. It be a fool's trick
+to show the old fox the hen's nest. Him as could steal my Evan might lay
+his claws on your gold.'</p>
+
+<p>It was good advice, and wisely followed.</p>
+
+<p>John Llwyd had seen a paper unfolded, but no gold; so what he had to
+tell did not count for much to hearers unconcerned.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But, coupled with the demeanour of Mrs. Edwards and her son, it put Mr.
+Pryse on the tenter-hooks of uncertainty.</p>
+
+<p>The thatching was completed, but no other little secret hiding-place was
+found, and discovery ended there.</p>
+
+<p>It was the season for the general repair of fences and dry walls, and
+William was kept busy.</p>
+
+<p>Winter was wearing away when, through his friend Thomas Williams,
+another stroke of good fortune came to him.</p>
+
+<p>Though I have called the latter a carpenter, the word must be taken in
+its broadest significance; he was also a joiner, and he aspired to be a
+millwright. In the days when he served his long apprenticeship, a man
+was expected to master his craft in all its details and branches, and to
+bring his mind to bear upon it, if he had one. He was older than his
+friend, and the very nature of his occupation had enlarged the circle
+under his observation.</p>
+
+<p>Unknown to any but William Edwards, his attic was stored with models of
+millwheels and machinery in various stages, at which he wrought when his
+workshop was closed.</p>
+
+<p>One morning, whilst February's snow yet lay upon the ground, a
+substantial miller named Owen Wynn, whose old mill threatened to topple
+over into the stream, stopped his horse at the carpenter's door, and
+asked abruptly 'if that was one of the buildings a young man named
+Edwards had put up.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Being answered in the affirmative, he asked permission to look over the
+place, adding&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'Sure, I have heard he is the best mason that ever put stone together in
+these parts, and I would like to be seeing for myself, whatever.'</p>
+
+<p>Nothing loth, Thomas led the stranger over the whole premises (small, as
+<i>we</i> should think), indicating the peculiar points of the builder's
+excellence.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, yes,' said he, 'I observe,' and straightway marched up the attic
+stairs uninvited.</p>
+
+<p>The models arrested his attention. 'Hah, sure! you are a millwright, are
+you? Are those improvements?'</p>
+
+<p>Thomas Williams modestly 'thought they were.'</p>
+
+<p>'Then you and this Edwards could build a substantial mill between you?'</p>
+
+<p>'Without a doubt, whatever.'</p>
+
+<p>'Is the mason at hand?'</p>
+
+<p>''Deed, my apprentice do be gone for him.' The prescient young fellow
+had already scented business.</p>
+
+<p>Sturdy and self-reliant as William might be, and older than his years,
+yet there could be no mistaking eighteen for thirty.</p>
+
+<p>The miller started when he approached, his apron on, his hammer in his
+hand. He thought him extremely young to have obtained such repute.</p>
+
+<p>However, before they separated, the two had been commissioned to build
+his water-mill and house, and a time appointed to find a suitable spot.</p>
+
+<p>They were both conscious that it <i>was an undertaking</i>&mdash;with William a
+great one. They felt as if the making<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span> or marring of their lives was in
+their hands. But they were not daunted.</p>
+
+<p>'If difficulties arise we must surmount them,' said William resolutely,
+before his plans were drawn. 'As I cannot get books I can read, I must
+be studying the castle again.'</p>
+
+<p>There were no Welsh books of any technical value to him; English he was
+unable to read. Fortunately for him, the walls and towers and arches of
+Caerphilly Castle had been as the leaves of an open and intelligible
+book, a work on ancient masonry no printed volume could surpass.</p>
+
+<p>He had need to study it well now, to learn the secret of the arch, and
+how to construct a tunnel to bear away the watery overflow from the
+mill-wheel.</p>
+
+<p>Learn it the young mason did, and that effectually.</p>
+
+<p>Hard at work were they and their men all through the summer months, the
+builders with stone and wood, and ere the frosts of autumn came to lay a
+destructive finger on the mortar, there was a goodly mill by the side of
+the river, storey rising above storey, and the tunnelled waterway firm
+and compact, only some woodwork and the flagstone roof to be added.</p>
+
+<p>It had been a period of great anxiety to both young men, for besides the
+risks attending all experimental work, Edwards was uneasy respecting his
+mother's possession of the farm, and Thomas Williams had resolved to
+seek Jonet for a wife if their work was a success.</p>
+
+<p>Of any portion he might expect with her he knew nothing.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span>The corn had ripened for the sickle, but no lease had yet been found.
+September shone upon the land, and the case became urgent.</p>
+
+<p>One evening, when the masons had laid by their tools for the night, the
+good vicar had a visitor. William Edwards desired to see the Rev. John
+Smith most particularly.</p>
+
+<div class="center"><a name="i243.jpg" id="i243.jpg"></a><img src="images/i243.jpg" width='428' height='700' alt="HE FOUND MR. MORRIS SEATED AT THE TABLE AS WELL AS THE
+VICAR" /></div>
+
+<p class="bold">HE FOUND MR. MORRIS SEATED AT THE TABLE AS WELL AS<br />THE
+VICAR.&mdash;<i>See page 245.</i></p>
+
+<p>To his surprise, when he was ushered into the low-ceiled parlour, he
+found Mr. Morris seated at the table as well as the vicar, evidently
+examining a number of geological specimens by the light of a couple of
+candles.</p>
+
+<p>William had met Mr. Morris several times of late chipping at rocks with
+a hammer, but did not expect to meet with him there, and could have
+dispensed with his presence.</p>
+
+<p>'Well, Edwards, what is your business?' asked the vicar after the first
+salutations. 'You need not hesitate to speak out; Mr. Morris is as much
+your friend as I am. What is it? Anything concerning the fine mill you
+are erecting?'</p>
+
+<p>'No, sir, it do be concerning the farm&mdash;and Mr. Pryse.'</p>
+
+<p>The gentlemen exchanged glances across the table. The change in
+William's frank voice and manner had not been lost on them.</p>
+
+<p>William laid his grandfather's will open before the vicar.</p>
+
+<p>'We did be finding that last autumn hid in a small box under the thatch,
+sir.'</p>
+
+<p>'You did not find the missing lease along with it, did you?'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'No, sir. And we cannot be finding it, high or low. But you will see,
+sir, the lease be named here more than once.' And drawing closer to the
+vicar he pointed with his finger.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, I perceive. Well, that certainly establishes the fact that you
+<i>had</i> a lease.'</p>
+
+<p>'Sure, indeed, sir. But do you be thinking it would serve instead of the
+real lease to stop Mr. Pryse from turning us out of the farm?'
+questioned William, with a very anxious face.</p>
+
+<p>'Um&mdash;a&mdash;um&mdash;a&mdash;well, I am not so sure about that. We might get an
+opinion if there was a lawyer about, not under Pryse's finger and thumb.
+You must know, Morris,' said the vicar, turning to his friend, 'this
+young fellow's father gave mortal offence to Pryse by a blunt opinion
+that he was overreaching. He has owed the family a grudge ever since,
+and has done all in his power to oust the widow from her holding. You
+will remember the talk there was, six years ago, about the disappearance
+of a young man from Cardiff, who was supposed to have gone off in the
+mysterious <i>Osprey</i> with money, not his own&mdash;some people said was
+"<i>carried</i> off" perforce. Anyway, that was the farm-servant of Mrs.
+Edwards, who was about to be married&mdash;for I read out the banns&mdash;and he
+had with him both his own savings and the money to pay the widow's
+half-year's rent. He was seen to enter Mr. Pryse's office. He ordered
+and bought things to set up farming, and <i>paid</i> for some. In three
+weeks' time Mr. Pryse made a seizure on the farm for unpaid rent,
+declaring the man a defaulter. Fortun<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span>ately, Mrs. Edwards had the means
+to meet his demands. Since then he has twice raised the rent, insisting
+that the widow is only a tenant at will, and last Martinmas served her
+with a notice of ejectment to come in force this present month,
+insisting that no lease exists. It so happens that both the father and
+grandfather died too suddenly to make any disclosures or arrangements.
+Thus the lease is missing, and this will has only just come to light.
+Look it over, and say what you think.'</p>
+
+<p>'Take a seat, William. I did not observe that you were standing all this
+while,' he added.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Morris shook his head as he folded up and returned the document. 'To
+any unprejudiced person this settles all doubt that a lease exists, and
+the duplicate must be in the possession of his lordship or his agent.
+But it does not specify the terms or the date of the lease, and <i>there</i>
+Mr. Pryse has the advantage. He may know of some clause you have
+infringed.'</p>
+
+<p>William sighed heavily. 'Then there will be no hope for us. It will
+break poor mother's heart, in truth it will. We don't believe his
+lordship knows a word. If I could but get to see him. But there, Mr.
+Pryse would stop that!' and he rose to depart.</p>
+
+<p>'Stay, stay!' cried Mr. Morris; 'maybe I can help you at this pinch.
+Find me pen, ink, and paper, Mr. Smith.'</p>
+
+<p>William looked on in bewilderment whilst the quill of Mr. Morris went
+squeaking across the paper, or he nibbled the feather end of the pen in
+a pause for thought, or for an answer to a question.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>After a time, which to William appeared hours, he threw the paper across
+the table to the vicar.</p>
+
+<p>'There,' said he, 'is a brief statement of the case, as detailed to me.
+If you find it correct, pray both of you affix your signatures. It shall
+be my care <i>that</i> reaches his lordship's own hand, though he is now at
+Court, and time is short. If you leave the will in our good vicar's
+charge, I will make a fair copy and enclose it, along with some private
+intelligence of my own concerning Mr. Pryse. Good-night, young man. Tell
+your mother not to be downhearted.'</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>CHAPTER XX.</span> <span class="smaller">IN THE NICK OF TIME.</span></h2>
+
+<p>'Name o' goodness, what be keeping Willem out so late?' said his mother,
+peering out into the night. 'I do hope he have not been stopping at the
+inn again, and him with that will in his pocket. He do be getting very
+unsteady since he has been having those big places to build.'</p>
+
+<p>''Deed, his sudden rise do be turning his head. He may have as sudden a
+fall one of these days,' was the commentary of Rhys.</p>
+
+<p>But when William came in half an hour later, as steady and sober as his
+brothers, and explained satisfactorily how he chanced to be so very
+late, there was nothing but the voice of gratitude to be heard. He had
+left the vicarage almost choked by his own inarticulate thanks.</p>
+
+<p>'It was quite providential that Mr. Morris did be staying at the
+vicarage,' said Mrs. Edwards. 'He do be a great man, sure, and kind.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, yes, and it was providential that <i>I</i> went to consult the vicar,
+instead of Rhys. Mr. Morris would be knowing nothing of <i>him</i>,
+whatever,' added William, rather proudly.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It was true that his uncommon success was making him somewhat
+self-sufficient. But so Rhys had been, with less reason.</p>
+
+<p>The weeks crept slowly on one after another.</p>
+
+<p>At the new mill, mason and millwright congratulated each other on
+hazardous difficulties overcome. The roof was on to the last flag. The
+arched tunnel was strong and firm. The machinery worked well, and the
+wheel went merrily round. When the painters cleared away their paint
+pots, they could hand the key to the miller in triumph.</p>
+
+<p>At the farm, hope had given way to doubt, and doubt was sinking into
+despair. The prayer of faith was timid and wavering. Only another day
+remained before the dreaded 9th of October, and as yet nothing had been
+heard either from Mr. Morris or the vicar, or from his lordship.
+Impending evil took the gloss off William's satisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>The morning of Tuesday the 8th broke dull, dreary, and depressing, with
+a heavy mist on the mountain and in the valley, which, towards eight
+o'clock, resolved itself into a drizzling rain, that made the cattle
+hang their heads and the sheep huddle together for mutual comfort.</p>
+
+<p>In view of contingencies, the farm stock had been reduced by sale below
+ordinary limits, and well-disposed neighbours had offered temporary
+houseroom and shelter amongst them for both family and anything movable.
+Thomas Williams cleared out his large attic for their accommodation, and
+Robert Jones promised to keep his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span> team in readiness to remove household
+goods or newly-gathered crops at a moment's notice.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing was being done on the farm but what common care for the living,
+biped and quadruped, rendered necessary. But a general ransack of house
+and barns was going on for the discovery of the missing lease, and
+everything was topsy-turvy. Never had the storeroom had such a turn-out
+for years. Red-eyed Jonet and Cate ripped open beds and pillows, turned
+over sacks, dived among fleeces. For the twentieth time Mrs. Edwards
+emptied the great oak chest, and turned over the leaves of the large old
+Bible, her face grey and set like a rock.</p>
+
+<p>Ales alone bore a cheerful countenance, and baked the week's bread as in
+the ordinary course.</p>
+
+<p>'Look you, Jane Edwards,' she said, 'it's no use fretting and fuming.
+What God wills we must bear. But there's no need to be putting the
+burden on one's own back before He bids one take it up.'</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Edwards sighed heavily. 'Ah, yes, Ales, true it is; but a good
+servant need never seek good service. We may seek far for a good farm.'</p>
+
+<p>'You don't be turned off this yet. And it's my firm belief you will be
+keeping the farm in spite of old Pryse. God's finger is stronger than
+man's arm. You wait and be patient. I've not been dreaming of Evan night
+after night for nothing. He seems to say, "I'm coming, I'm coming;" and
+I feel as if God was bringing him back, look you. I do!'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'Ah, poor, foolish Ales! your longings do create your dreams. Evan be as
+far to seek as our lease.'</p>
+
+<p>'May be so, and may be not. I do be feeling as if he was as near and as
+warm almost as the loaf just baked, look you. And I feel, I feel'&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'You do <i>look</i> half out of your mind, Ales,' said Mrs. Edwards, in grave
+rebuke, rising from her hopeless quest and locking the coffer again.
+'This be no time to talk of foolish dreams.'</p>
+
+<p>'Mother,' called Jonet from the bedroom they were searching, 'there be a
+strange man with a bundle on a stick coming over the stile, and he's
+dripping wet.'</p>
+
+<p>Ales screamed, darted out by the open door, and before Mrs. Edwards
+could follow she was clasped in the arms of a rough-looking fellow, and
+crying out, 'I knew, I knew! Thank God!' In another moment she was
+sobbing and laughing hysterically on his breast in the reaction of her
+strange excitement.</p>
+
+<p>'Name o' goodness, that never do be you, Evan?' burst from Mrs. Edwards
+in unmitigated amazement.</p>
+
+<div class="center"><a name="i253.jpg" id="i253.jpg"></a><img src="images/i253.jpg" width='419' height='700' alt="LONG-LOST EVAN HAD COME BACK" /></div>
+
+<p class="bold">LONG-LOST EVAN HAD COME BACK.&mdash;<i>See page 252.</i></p>
+
+<p>'Ay, ay, it's me for certain,' was answered cheerily, as the sturdy,
+unshaved man brushed past her, carrying his limp sweetheart into the
+kitchen and grandfather's stiff-backed chair, heedless of the wet trail
+he left upon the floor.</p>
+
+<p>Picture the excitement. Strong-minded Ales in hysterics! Jonet and Cate
+rushing about wildly, and shouting out that long-lost Evan had come
+back! William and Rhys hurrying in, astonished and delighted, followed
+by Davy, for once in a hurry; and Evan, loth<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span> to release Ales, puzzled
+to find hands for them all to shake at once, and equally puzzled how to
+compose Ales, who is sobbing and laughing by turns.</p>
+
+<p>Housewifely instinct, or a peculiar fume in her nostrils, acts as a
+restorative. 'The bread's burning,' she gasps and Cate presses forward
+to the rescue of the scorching loaves, forgotten in the confusion and
+excitement.</p>
+
+<p>Then follows a string of questions, huddled one upon another, but before
+any one can be answered, Mrs. Edwards says dolefully, 'Ah, Evan, we be
+thankful to see you back, but you have come on a sad day for all that.'</p>
+
+<p>'Have I? Then, 'deed, it had nearly been a sadder for in coming across
+the ford, I either mistook my depth, or the water is rising, for it came
+up to my waistband, and nearly carried me off my feet. But I'm not to be
+drowned, that's clear, till I've settled with that old rogue Pryse,' he
+says, with an emphasis and a look that are in themselves anathemas.</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, I told you so,' cries Ales. 'Woe to the man that makes a hundred
+sad!' but in the midst of an affirmative chorus comes an interruption in
+the shape of the old brown house-dog, wagging his tail and dropping a
+big bundle wrapped in sailcloth at the feet of Evan, then jumping up to
+ask for recognition and thanks.</p>
+
+<p>It is then seen that Evan is standing in a pool of water, whereupon Mrs.
+Edwards orders him off to change his wet clothes for the dry ones in his
+bundle, whilst she and the other women bestir themselves to set the
+dinner on the table, Ales making all sorts of blunders in the process.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It is by no means a common dinner on a Welsh farm table at that period,
+although it only comprises pork, potatoes, and greens, boiled in the
+same pot with the dough dumplings. Mrs. Edwards marks it out reverently
+as they take their seats.</p>
+
+<p>'Let us be thanking Almighty God that the good food provided for our
+last dinner under this roof should have become, by His blessing, a
+thanksgiving feast; for the one supposed dead do be alive again, the one
+lost do be found.'</p>
+
+<p>The general 'Amen' was peculiarly solemn, and it occurred to Evan that
+for a thanksgiving there was more of sorrow than gladness.</p>
+
+<p>Then the first greeting of Mrs. Edwards recurred to him, coupled with
+the remark about a 'last dinner'; and though the savour was appetising,
+and his fast had been long, he could not have touched a morsel until his
+doubts were resolved. He put his question, and was speedily answered by
+more than one voice&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, Evan, we cannot find our lease, and Mr. Pryse be going to drive us
+off the farm to-morrow.'</p>
+
+<p>It was his turn to look solemn. ''Deed, and that do be bad. You do have
+a lease, sure to goodness?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh yes. Willem found grandfather's will, and the lease do be left to
+Rhys; but no lease can we be finding anywhere.'</p>
+
+<p>'Where have you been looking?'</p>
+
+<p>All sorts of likely and unlikely places were named.</p>
+
+<p>'My first master kept his lease in the Bible. Did you look there?'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'Indeed, yes, Evan,' came from Mrs. Edwards, with a disheartened sigh;
+'I turned over every leaf.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, I do mean under the old cloth cover. He kept his there.'</p>
+
+<p>A moment of breathless astonishment&mdash;a general rise from the table!</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Edwards was down on her knees unlocking the coffer.</p>
+
+<p>In another minute the Bible was out; the stout cloth cover ripped off.
+There lay the parchment, flat and clean, as when laid there years upon
+years before by hands now in the clasp of death.</p>
+
+<p>'<i>Thank God!</i>' cried Mrs. Edwards, still upon her knees. 'My children,
+the finger of God is in this. Our search did be vain till He did send
+His own messenger to point it out. As Ales did say, God's finger <i>is</i>
+stronger than man's arm; strong to save. Let us once more thank Him.'</p>
+
+<p>The relief had been overpowering. The thanksgiving was strong and deep.
+The reaction was too great almost for speech. The dinner, nearly cold,
+was eaten in silence; but it was the silence of hopefulness, not
+despair.</p>
+
+<p>It was followed by a clattering and chattering of loosened tongues,
+guesses at Mr. Pryse's consternation on the morrow, and questionings of
+Evan's disappearance and adventures, which we may leave that morrow to
+answer.</p>
+
+<p class="center">*&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;*&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;*&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;*&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;*</p>
+
+<p>Mean though he was through every fibre of his being, Mr. Pryse was
+lavish in regard to his own creature<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span> comforts. Yet even many of these
+he contrived to obtain gratuitously from tenants who loved him little
+and feared him much, or from obsequious sea-captains whose cargo was not
+altogether coal or iron, captains who had goods to bring ashore without
+compliments to Custom House officers. And those were anything but days
+of free trade.</p>
+
+<p>He sat at ease between a cosy fire, which cost him nothing, and a round
+breakfast-table on which were the remains of chicken, ham, and eggs, all
+of which were equally cheap. A fragrant aroma of Mocha coffee yet
+lingered around the foreign china cup and saucer and coffee-pot, none of
+which had paid duty to England's monarch, any more than the Barcelona
+silk handkerchief cast lightly over the knee he was indolently nursing
+on the other, whilst he leaned back in his tall chair picking his teeth,
+and a smile of uttermost self-content and enjoyment creased the
+parchment-like skin into folds under his wicked old eyes.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes,' said he, half aloud to himself; 'out they go to-morrow, stock and
+lot! And let them get another farm where they can. Lease, indeed'&mdash;and
+he chuckled. 'If they could find any lease to show, there would have
+been no sending of cows and sheep and grain to market. Ah, yes, I shall
+soon pay off my old score to that fellow who drowned himself like a
+fool. Yes, and get a higher rent, now that building son of his has
+enlarged the homestead.'</p>
+
+<p>The chuckle had not died out of his skinny throat when the door opened,
+and he caught his breath, for a special messenger from his lordship,
+booted and spurred,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span> like one who rides in haste, entered unannounced,
+and with the simple remark that he 'had rather a rough passage across
+the Severn from Bristol that morning, and found the air raw and cold,'
+presented a sealed packet, marked 'Immediate and important.'</p>
+
+<p>Had he said he crossed in a Revenue cutter, Mr. Pryse might not so
+readily have taken the hint thrown out.</p>
+
+<p>As it was, he apologised for the coldness of the breakfast, and from a
+private cabinet produced a bottle of genuine Hollands&mdash;which had never
+gone through a Custom House&mdash;and, setting them before his unexpected
+visitor, invited him to help himself.</p>
+
+<p>'I trust his lordship is well?' he said blandly, but quite as a matter
+of course.</p>
+
+<p>'No; he was dangerously ill when I left,' came from the courier, with
+startling bluntness.</p>
+
+<p>What? His easy-going master ill! perhaps dying! Mr. Pryse turned ashen
+grey. 'You don't say so!' he ejaculated with a gasp, his fingers
+trembling, as he at last unfolded the despatch and began to read, hardly
+conscious that the man, smacking his lips over the fiery Hollands, had
+been watching him all along with keen, observant eyes.</p>
+
+<p>With all Mr. Pryse's self-command the paper rattled in his fingers as he
+read. It was not a lengthy epistle, and only the signature was his
+lordship's; the letter was from his son and heir. Its sole purport was
+to prevent injustice, as the act of a dying man.</p>
+
+<p>In stern and peremptory words it forbade Simon Pryse to harass or
+disturb the Widow Edwards in her holding,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span> since he must know it was
+leased for three lives, and would not fall in until the demise of
+William Edwards' eldest son, then living. Moreover, he was commanded to
+refund, from his own purse, all excess rent he had extorted from the
+widow, <i>yet not included in his accounts</i>. And he was required to
+furnish a true and just statement of all the moneys in his hands and all
+his dealings and transactions in his lordship's name, not omitting the
+share he was said to have taken in the abduction of one Evan Evans,
+seven years prior to that date.</p>
+
+<p>'It shall be done,' said Mr. Pryse hoarsely, as the messenger rose to
+depart, fully satisfied with the result of his observations.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, it <i>shall</i> be done!' cried the infuriated agent, when the man was
+gone, springing to his feet with a tremendous oath. 'But not as his
+lordship or his lordship's heir proposes. Shall I forego the revenge I
+have nursed for years, when a few hours will bring the hated tribe
+within my grip? No; I will set my feet upon their necks if I die for
+it!' and another fierce anathema parted those thin lips of his.</p>
+
+<p>All on a sudden he stopped short, and bit his long nails viciously. 'Has
+some one turned traitor?' he murmured between set teeth. 'Those poor
+farming idiots could not get a letter to his lordship's hand. No matter.
+The bolt has fallen sooner than I expected, but trust me to be taken
+unprepared. It has fallen in the nick of time. In another hour the
+<i>Cambria</i> would have sailed.'</p>
+
+<p>Upstairs, three steps at a time like a boy, he ran, exulting in his own
+crafty schemes for outwitting justice;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span> drew his blue and white check
+curtain quite across his bedroom window&mdash;a preconcerted signal to the
+<i>Cambria's</i> skipper&mdash;changed his kerseymere smalls for his leather
+riding breeches, and was downstairs in his private office as usual, yet
+not as usual. He was on his knees before his strong box and his golden
+god.</p>
+
+<p>In his guilty knowledge and his craftiness, he had years before prepared
+for flight on emergency. He had lodged a portion of his filchings in
+Wood's Gloucester Bank, under a fictitious name. Yet as there was no
+other provincial bank at that time in all England and Wales, and no bank
+notes under &pound;20 value, exchange was not easy. Rents, etc., were paid in
+specie. Specie also was transmitted to his lordship under strict guard.
+Whenever an opportunity occurred, the agent converted coin into notes,
+and packed them in the waistband of his leather breeches. Still, coin
+had accumulated in his strong box, always packed close, and secured with
+triple locks, ready for removal on short notice, though its weight
+belied its bulk.</p>
+
+<p>The signal brought the skipper. There was already a tacit understanding
+between the worthy pair, and their conference was brief. Arrangements
+were made for the <i>Cambria</i> to drop down the river with the evening
+tide, and lay to outside in the bay. Fain would the skipper have Mr.
+Pryse go aboard with his strong box, and make all sail at once.</p>
+
+<p>No, no; he was not willing to forego his revenge or the prospect of
+adding a succession of rents to his ill-gotten gains; so a four-oared
+boat was to meet him at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span> Taff's Well landing-place up the river on the
+morrow, and await his coming&mdash;ay, even until midnight.</p>
+
+<p>His impish friends, Avarice and Malice, were more potent advisers than
+the wary skipper; so, with a shrug of the shoulders, he withdrew, and
+obeyed.</p>
+
+<p>'That's a heavy load you've got, messmates,' called a sailor to the two
+others conveying to the schooner the strong box, covered with tarpaulin,
+as if to protect it from the rain. But they merely answered, 'Ay, ay,'
+and declined assistance.</p>
+
+<p>The afternoon was then far spent, but two horses stood at the door, and
+in a few minutes Mr. Pryse, booted and spurred, and cased in a long
+riding-coat, was in the saddle, the flaps of his three-cornered hat let
+down, as was commonly the case in wet weather, so as to convert it into
+a broad-brimmed slouch, a pair of saddle-bags slung before him, likewise
+holsters, fitted with pistols, carefully loaded.</p>
+
+<p>He trotted away from the door he was never to see again, with a lie on
+his lips to his housekeeper, and, followed by his less
+elaborately-accoutred attendant, took the new Merthyr Tydvil Road, which
+not only ran parallel with the river in a direct line wherever
+practicable, but avoided the long detour by Caerphilly, where no rents
+would be paid until the Martinmas Fair.</p>
+
+<p>He had rents, and more than rents, to collect as he stopped at wayside
+houses, or so-called inns, off and on the direct road, and was not to be
+denied, though a day before due. So he managed to pocket some heavy cash
+before, at a late hour, he stopped for the night under the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span> shadow of
+cliff-seated Castel Coch, to dry his drenched overcoat, eat a hearty
+supper, and retire to <i>rest</i>, leaving orders that he was to be in the
+saddle by daybreak in the morning.</p>
+
+<p>He was in a desperate hurry to transact his pleasant bit of business
+with Mrs. Edwards, but could not forbear grasping at all the coin he
+could by the way, never thinking that the overreaching hand is apt to
+grasp at shadows.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>CHAPTER XXI.</span> <span class="smaller">THE FINGER OF GOD.</span></h2>
+
+<p>The heavy rain had ceased in the night. The sky was clear, the eaves and
+trees had forgotten to drip, the mist was lifting from the mountain-top
+and from the surcharged river, when, after a succession of profitable
+calls, between nine and ten o'clock in the morning, master and man rode
+up the rugged ascent to Brookside Farm, and, dismounting, the former
+walked into the house with insolent assumption, and, finding only Mrs.
+Edwards there, demanded rudely&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'Is the half-year's rent ready?' Of course, that was his first care.</p>
+
+<p>'There do be no rent owing, sir.'</p>
+
+<p>'What do you mean, woman?'</p>
+
+<p>'I mean that you have been paid, and overpaid, and I do not be going to
+pay you one brass farthing.'</p>
+
+<p>He grew livid, set his teeth, and looked as if he would have struck her
+to the ground.</p>
+
+<p>'We'll see about that. You had due notice to quit. You have stayed on
+the farm in defiance of the law, and now, by'&mdash;(and he swore a great
+oath)&mdash;'you shall turn out without stick or stock. Morgan,' over<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span> his
+shoulder to the man, 'call up the other men. We will soon see who is
+master here. I seize in his lordship's name.'</p>
+
+<p>'And <i>I</i> forbid in his lordship's name,' said Mr. Morris, whose shadow
+in the doorway had been mistaken for the man Morgan's.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Pryse recoiled. Mr. Morris was no stranger to him; and no friend of
+his, he well knew. What brought him there, or the vicar, close at his
+heels?</p>
+
+<p>'By what right do <i>you</i> presume to interfere?' he asked boldly.</p>
+
+<p>'By <i>this</i>, sir,' unfolding a letter. 'I presume you know his lordship's
+hand and seal. <i>You</i> were not the only one for whom the courier had a
+despatch yesterday.'</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Pryse seemed to shrink within his clothes. A greenish hue overspread
+the yellow of his skin. A clammy dew burst out upon his forehead. Had he
+spurned the skipper's sage advice only to come here for this? It was
+maddening to think of.</p>
+
+<p>He attempted to brazen it out, as a last resource.</p>
+
+<p>'I am acting in his lordship's interest, sir. He has been shamelessly
+misinformed. These people have not paid more than a fair rental. And
+they never had a lease.'</p>
+
+<p>'What do you be calling <i>that</i>, sir?' And Rhys pressing to the front,
+held up the lease&mdash;at a safe distance, for Mr. Pryse appeared ready to
+spring upon it like a wild cat.</p>
+
+<p>'And now, sir,' said Mr. Morris sternly, 'you will have to disgorge.
+Those are his lordship's orders. You<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span> see we hold a quittance for half a
+year's rent. Evan, bring forward the receipt.'</p>
+
+<p>Had a ghost risen from the grave to confront him, Mr. Pryse could not
+have looked more aghast or terror-stricken, when Evan stepped from
+behind into the light, with the faded receipt in his hand.</p>
+
+<p>Baffled, defeated, confronted, as it were, by the dead.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Pryse shrieked aloud, fell on his knees, covering his eyes with his
+quivering hands.</p>
+
+<p>'You here?&mdash;<i>you?</i> I fancied you had gone down with the <i>Osprey</i>.'</p>
+
+<p>'You hear him, gentlemen? You hear him? He do be owning his share in
+kidnapping me! No, you smuggling old rogue, when the <i>Osprey</i> went all
+to pieces on the rocks at the Land's End with its drunken crew and
+cargo&mdash;I, yes indeed <i>I</i>, gentlemen, who had been dragged on board bound
+like a thief&mdash;I did be the only one saved. I had been sent up aloft to
+punish me because I would not join the wicked crew, and when the mast
+did go overboard, I held on for my very life. I did be picked up the
+next day by an outward-bound East Indiaman, when there was little life
+left in me. But I wasn't to be drowned till I'd settled scores with this
+old villain here, that did send me adrift with rogues like himself, and
+to rob the widow blackened my honest name.</p>
+
+<p>'No, Mr. Pryse, though I've been sailing the seas all these sorrowful
+years in one craft or other, cuffed, kicked, half-starved, used worse
+than a dog, and never<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span> able to make my way back to my sweetheart or
+home, if it had not been for another shipwreck I'd never have been here
+now. A Liverpool trader took me and two shipmates off a raft in the
+middle of the ocean, when we was half-mad with hunger and thirst, and
+the good captain, God bless him, sent me on shore at Fishguard, to make
+my way home to my sweetheart as quick as I could. And I didn't have to
+beg my way, for I had got money hid under my belt. And I do be thanking
+God sirs, for bringing me here in time to confound this wicked old
+shivering coward. I do be feeling as if I could shake every bone out of
+his ugly skin, but Ales bids me leave him to God and his master.'</p>
+
+<p>''Deed, he deserves kicking from the top of the hill to the bottom,'
+thrust in fiery William.</p>
+
+<p>Not a word had the detected steward spoken, but his features and his
+lean fingers worked vindictively, as if longing to grasp the speakers'
+throats.</p>
+
+<p>All at once he shrieked out&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'That receipt's a forgery, a vile forgery. Look at it, gentlemen. That
+paper has never been in salt water. Ugh! How could a common sailor keep
+a bit of paper unworn and dry for six years, and through two shipwrecks?
+It is absurd.'</p>
+
+<p>Gaining courage from his own sneering suggestion, Mr. Pryse rose to his
+feet, little expecting the answer which came from William.</p>
+
+<p>''Deed, no, sirs. Neither our receipt, nor Owen Griffith's here, nor
+Evan's own money ever went nearer the sea than old Breint's saddle. He
+had made a private<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span> pocket under the lining, and there they did be
+waiting for him, yes, sure.'</p>
+
+<p>'It's well they did, for those thieves on the <i>Osprey</i> did be stripping
+me of all I had,' put in Evan.</p>
+
+<p>And now, Mr. Morris declaring the receipts genuine, insisted on Mr.
+Pryse there and then refunding the extra rent extorted year by year from
+Mrs. Edwards, giving a quittance up to date on account of the receipt.</p>
+
+<p>But Mr. Pryse had recovered courage&mdash;and craft. He began to bluster.
+Refused to acknowledge the authority of either Mr. Morris or the vicar.
+He was answerable to his lordship. To him only would he render an
+account. He would bid them good-morning.</p>
+
+<p>'Well, sir,' said Mr. Morris, 'I cannot enforce his lordship's commands
+without legal warrant. But had I known all I have heard since I came
+hither, I should have come provided with a warrant for your arrest, Mr.
+Pryse. And I warn you the reckoning will come sooner than you expect.'</p>
+
+<p>Much sooner!</p>
+
+<p>He walked out of the farmhouse with head erect and defiant, as if he had
+won a victory. He bade Morgan pay his myrmidons and follow; then rode
+down hill baffled, but not wholly defeated. He had not disgorged a
+penny, had added other rents as he came along to the hoard he was
+carrying away. Warrant, indeed! He would soon be beyond reach of
+warrants!</p>
+
+<p>'Nay,' he shouted back with a snarl, 'threatened men live long;' but
+before he reached the level, some sense of ungratified revenge must have
+stung him, for he put<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span> spurs to his horse, and dashed on, splashing
+through the swollen brook, and turning the corner to the ford&mdash;not the
+high-road&mdash;as if pursued by a troop of demons.</p>
+
+<p>Blinded by his own evil passions, exulting in his escape, yet alarmed by
+the sound of hoofs behind him, he spurred his horse to the uncertain
+ford in the same hot haste, seeing nothing but his own need to cross.</p>
+
+<div class="center"><a name="i269.jpg" id="i269.jpg"></a><img src="images/i269.jpg" width='425' height='700' alt="BLINDED BY PASSION, HE SPURRED HIS HORSE TO THE UNCERTAIN
+FORD" /></div>
+
+<p class="bold">BLINDED BY PASSION, HE SPURRED HIS HORSE TO THE UNCERTAIN<br />
+FORD.&mdash;<i>See page 271.</i></p>
+
+<p>His follower heard a shriek, but reached the river's brink only in time
+to see a swirling mass of something far down the rain-filled river.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Pryse had gone to meet the <i>Cambria's</i> boat in other fashion than he
+contemplated.</p>
+
+<p>His spurs entangled in the stirrups, his pockets and saddle-bags
+weighted with ill-gotten coin, horse and man had gone together.</p>
+
+<p>A Welshman in a coracle<a name="FNanchor_13_13" id="FNanchor_13_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a> called out to the ferryman at Taff's Well
+Ferry, and he to the <i>Cambria's</i> men rowing up-stream, and amongst them
+they got a panting, struggling, half-dead horse ashore, to find what
+<i>had</i> been Mr. Pryse <i>underneath</i>, clutching at the turned saddle and
+bags with the grip that never relaxes&mdash;the grip of death.</p>
+
+<p>Cover him over. Let the Preventive-service men, chasing the other boat,
+fight with pistol and cutlass for the possession of the dead, his gold,
+and his incriminating papers, whilst the smart Preventive cutter in the
+bay boards the short-handed <i>Cambria</i>, and tows her con<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span>fiscated prize
+into port, the dead man's strong box included. Little recks the drowned
+man what becomes of his hoard. He has gone to his final reckoning with a
+Lord he had forgotten, a Lord no man can cheat or deceive.</p>
+
+<p>Intelligence of his retributive death comes to the rejoicing family at
+the farm with a sobering shock, but nobody affects to lament. And all
+over his lordship's wide domain, oppressed men breathe freer for this
+one man's death.</p>
+
+<p>'Man deliberates, but God delivers,' is said with bated breath by more
+than sententious Ales, whilst Mrs. Edwards insists that his death is a
+judgment for his strictures on her lost husband.</p>
+
+<p>And whilst the unhonoured remains of the fraudulent agent are committed
+to the earth, in Cardiff, with no mourner but his housekeeper, the vicar
+of Eglwysilan reads out the banns once more for Evan and Ales, and for
+Rhys Edwards and Cate Griffiths also.</p>
+
+<p>Great is the bustle of preparation. There is money in possession and
+hope in the future.</p>
+
+<p>There is no need to ask for contributions at the 'bidding,' though the
+invited guests are many.</p>
+
+<p>The new room William built is being fitted up with somewhat more regard
+to health and decency than has been common hitherto. Cate is bringing to
+her bridegroom more than had been looked for&mdash;dowlas sheets and
+blankets, spun and woven under their own cottage roof, and a good flock
+bed and pillows from the same source. Then she had not been idle, and if
+under-<i>linen</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span> was not worn in those days in that humid climate, she had
+a fair supply of flannel, and of linsey-woolsey for gowns and aprons,
+all of her own spinning. Ay, and she had stockings knitted ready to
+assume with her new dignity.</p>
+
+<p>The cottage at Castella has long been occupied by other tenants. Mr.
+Morris offers Evan a small farm between Caerphilly and Cardiff, on very
+easy terms. The goods he had bought and paid for have been sold, but
+fresh are furnished readily; and Robert Jones generously conveys the
+long-hoarded household goods of Ales to her new home, without fee or
+guerdon, and, with them, a winter store of peat and culm as a wedding
+gift.</p>
+
+<p>Both at Owen's cottage and the farm the women are busy as bees, baking
+and boiling for the wedding feast, for which Thomas Williams sets up
+long plank tables in the meadow that slopes to the foot of the hill, the
+break-neck ascent to the farm being a consideration on such an occasion.</p>
+
+<p>For the brides are supposed unwilling to be wed, or their friends to
+part with them, and there is racing and chasing to recover the runaway
+brides, and mock contests to obtain possession of them, in which the
+mountain ponies play their parts well. Then, the brides being captured,
+there is the headlong race to the church, which bodes ill to any unwary
+pedestrian they may meet. It is a remnant of old barbaric custom not to
+be dispensed with, and all the youths and maidens, far and wide, join in
+the race. Scarcely less noisy is the return, when the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span> ceremony is over,
+and each bride is mounted behind her husband, Rhys and Cate taking the
+precedence.</p>
+
+<p>Be sure they bring appetites to the feast, where huge joints of boiled
+beef are matched by piles of smoking potatoes and turnips, the
+brown-jacketed esculents being as yet dainties to the multitude. Then
+there are great pitchers of <i>cwrw da</i> and buttermilk for thirsty
+throats. And if there be a deficiency of glass and cutlery, according to
+our notions, all is as it should be to the feasters, who are to the
+manner born, and not fastidious, and who fling their contributions to
+the feast into the earthen bowls with right goodwill.</p>
+
+<p>Something much more important gave grace to the festive occasion, and
+that was the presence of a Welsh harper, one of the decaying race of
+bards, who sang them songs of Arthur and Llewellyn, and twanged his harp
+for lively dances on the greensward when the boards were cleared, and
+might be held accountable for more than one match decided that day.
+Certainly Thomas Williams obtained Jonet's shy promise to marry him in
+the spring if her mother would consent; and even Davy struck up an
+acquaintance with the niece of Robert Jones, that was likely to lead to
+something more in the end.</p>
+
+<p>It was quite an exceptional gathering, for not a drop of rain fell the
+whole day to mar the entertainment, and, short though it was, a good
+round frosty moon offered its shining lamp to light the middle-aged
+couple and their escort to their new home beyond Caerphilly, and to make
+even the crossing of the Taff safe to the contingent from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span> the mountains
+beyond. All had 'gone merry as a marriage bell.'</p>
+
+<p>And here my story might be supposed to end; but for my hero&mdash;and I count
+William Edwards a hero&mdash;a new era was about to dawn.</p>
+
+<p>I have indicated that mines of coal and iron were being worked in
+Glamorganshire, but that the want of roads and bridges for conveyance
+and communication retarded the development of its untold mineral
+resources. Then, the hard nature of the coal already dug unfitted it,
+except as culm, for household use or smelting purposes in such furnaces
+as existed, where the fuel was principally charcoal.</p>
+
+<p>But about this time experiments were being made to test its utility, and
+Mr. John Morris, who for years had gone geologising among the mountains,
+was one of the first to suggest its feasibility. He had made experiments
+on a small scale, but Mr. Pryse had thrown impediments in the way of
+smelting on a larger basis in the neighbourhood of Cardiff, where the
+river and the sea were close for conveyance if his scheme succeeded.</p>
+
+<p>'It was too near the Castle. His lordship would have no reeking furnaces
+so close to his residence. There was no land for sale,' etc. etc.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Morris was not to be put down by Mr. Pryse. He had applied, not to
+the old Viscount, but to his son and heir, who was not hoodwinked by Mr.
+Pryse, and cordially seconded the proposal. The old Viscount was even
+then on his deathbed. The succession of the new<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span> one, shortly after Mr.
+Pryse was committed to his narrow cell, left Mr. Morris free to act.</p>
+
+<p>The day before the double wedding he explained his views to William
+Edwards, and made to him a proposition.</p>
+
+<p>So it happened that, whilst Rhys and the rest were making merry, William
+was half the time lost in thought, and one or other rallied him on his
+unsociability, as they considered it.</p>
+
+<p><i>He</i> was simply considering his ability to undertake the erection of the
+smelting furnaces John Morris had in view. He had not much doubt of his
+own power to accomplish anything any other man could do, or had done, if
+the opportunity to study what had been previously done was afforded him.
+But here something was required differing from aught that had gone
+before, or with which he was acquainted.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Morris had given him time for mature deliberation. He had great
+faith in the capacity of the self-taught genius, and still more in his
+indomitable determination to overcome difficulties.</p>
+
+<p>Yet books he had none that would afford the information he needed. He
+had done what he could to supply the defects of his education, thanks to
+the vicar. But he was still 'Cymro uniaith,' a Welshman of one language;
+and, though the literature of Wales certainly dates back to the twelfth
+century, and is said to date back to the sixth, its ancient legends,
+ballads, and poems would not instruct him how to build furnaces which
+should convert the hard Welsh coal into the smelter's slave.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>If there were English books on the subject, he was ignorant, and could
+not have read them had such been laid before him.</p>
+
+<p>He was not given to waste his time in unprofitable regrets.</p>
+
+<p>Before any one else was astir he was on the road northward to Merthyr
+Tydvil, bent on examining the process of iron-smelting as there carried
+on. The name of John Morris procured him ready admission to the works.
+But, although they had been in existence for a couple of centuries, and
+the ancient forests had been denuded of their giant oaks to supply their
+furnaces, they had as yet no furnace that would fuse the ore with coal
+alone, and the oak trees were growing scarce.</p>
+
+<p>William came away shaking his head, and muttering as he strode along:
+'Sure, if those be their smelting furnaces, there do be one as good at
+the Castle. They do be wanting a stronger blast if they employ coal. It
+will be a job to construct furnaces that will burn the stone-coal Mr.
+Morris be saying gives such great heat with neither flame nor smoke. But
+I'm bound to have a try what I can be doing. Sure, I'm not willing to
+give in without a try, look you!'</p>
+
+<p>And in this frame of mind he returned home to make calculations and
+sketches, and to think out the matter, walking to and fro in front of
+the house, with his head bent down and his hands behind him.</p>
+
+<p>'Idling,' his mother called it. Rhys had grown wiser.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>''Deed, mother, Willem do be having his "thinks." Best be leaving him
+alone.'</p>
+
+<p>'But he do not even be knitting, look you!'</p>
+
+<p>'Never mind, mother <i>fach</i>; he do be "studdying," as he do call it. We
+work with our hands; Willem do work with his head&mdash;yes, yes.'</p>
+
+<p>The following day he was away again, much to his mother's discomfort, as
+his silent and wandering mood had always been.</p>
+
+<p>If she had followed, she might have tracked him to his old storehouse of
+knowledge, Caerphilly Castle, and far down a crumbling flight of stone
+steps to a curious vault below the level of the moat, and, beneath that
+marvel of marvels, the reft, overhanging tower.</p>
+
+<p>He had gathered, by inquiry from the vicar and others, that here had
+anciently been a furnace for the smelting of metals for coinage and
+other purposes; and that it was supposed to have been employed, during a
+siege, for melting lead to pour from the battlements upon the besiegers;
+and, further, that either the besiegers or some traitor within contrived
+to let in a jet of water from the moat upon the molten metal, causing
+the terrific explosion which rent the tower from top to bottom, and left
+the strongly-built half hanging eleven feet out of the perpendicular, as
+a testimony to future ages.</p>
+
+<p>But it was not of battles or sieges William was thinking, unless it
+might be his own conflict with a difficulty. He was there to examine the
+ancient furnace,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span> with no one to talk or interrupt, and to found his own
+theories thereupon.</p>
+
+<p>In a very short time Mr. Morris had his answer.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, sir, I think I can undertake your work.'</p>
+
+<p>It was a bold undertaking for a farmer's son, self-taught, and only
+twenty years of age.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTE:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_13_13" id="Footnote_13_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13_13"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> An oval wicker boat covered with hide, with only a single
+seat, as used by the ancient Britons, and by the Welsh far into the
+present century.</p></div></div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>CHAPTER XXII.</span> <span class="smaller">A BLIND INSTRUCTOR.</span></h2>
+
+<p>Mrs. Edwards did not readily reconcile herself to the loss of her
+faithful serving-maid Ales. Still less readily to the substitution of
+Cate, for, now that she was the wife of Rhys, she took another footing
+on the floor than when she was Cate Griffith, and she allowed no one to
+forget that the farm was left to Rhys by his grandfather's will, and,
+therefore, he was master, the implication being that she was mistress.</p>
+
+<p>Hitherto Mrs. Edwards had been head and front of everything. As she had
+told Mr. Pryse, '<i>she</i> was the farmer.' It was for her to dictate, for
+others to obey.</p>
+
+<p>Now, as she had foreseen, the marriage of Rhys had subverted all that.
+Not that Rhys himself had changed his manner towards his mother, but he
+had long held himself competent to manage the farm without guidance; and
+when there was no capable Ales at hand to anticipate her wishes, and
+even the orders she gave to her own daughter Jonet were apt to be
+disputed and reversed by the young wife, she felt much like a queen
+deposed. She did not, however, surrender her sceptre willingly,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span> but
+pursued her own course as of old. As little was Jonet disposed to take
+orders from her sister-in-law.</p>
+
+<p>The consequent result was confusion, mismanagement, and altercation,
+Cate's voice having suddenly grown shrill and loud.</p>
+
+<p>Of course Rhys took the part of his wife&mdash;though dubiously&mdash;whilst
+William and Davy enlisted on the side of the mother or Jonet; so that,
+although the oppressor was no more, and the sun of prosperity was rising
+over Brookside Farm, peace spread her weary wings for flight.</p>
+
+<p>Outside, Jonet had an ally in Thomas Williams, and he did his best to
+console her with the prospect of escape to wifehood, and a home of her
+own&mdash;a home for which her own distaff and her mother's spinning-wheel
+were busily making preparation.</p>
+
+<p>Hot-tempered William was, however, the first to shake the dust of the
+old home from his well-shod feet.</p>
+
+<p>It was after a sharp altercation over the vexed question of home rule,
+which had left Jonet and his mother both in tears, that he startled them
+by saying&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'Well, well, really, I did never be expecting to turn my back on the old
+place with pleasure. But I am going to Cardiff next week, to be doing
+some building for Mr. Morris; and, look you, it is rejoicing I shall be
+to leave all this noise and contention behind.'</p>
+
+<p>'Going away!' was the breathless, general exclamation, with varying
+addenda.</p>
+
+<p>''Deed, and sure you're welcome! You do be the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span> most obstinate and
+worst-tempered of the whole lot,' from Cate.</p>
+
+<p>'Well, Willem, I'll be sorry to be seeing the back of you; but sure and
+it may perhaps be the best for all,' added Rhys.</p>
+
+<p>'What, going before I do be marrying?' questioned Jonet; 'but I don't
+wonder, anybody would be glad to get away.'</p>
+
+<p>'Going to Cardiff? Oh, my dear boy, my Willem, what ever shall I be
+doing without you? Will you be long away?' cried his mother.</p>
+
+<p>'Sure, and I cannot tell, mother dear. I may never come back to live
+here. And I am loth to leave you behind to be plagued with the
+"continual dropping" of a contentious woman, but I hope to have a farm
+of my own some day for you to manage, look you.'</p>
+
+<p>Peace-loving Davy now put in his word, in lowered tones, to William and
+his mother.</p>
+
+<p>''Deed, and I was be thinking for some time that the farm was not big
+enough to hold Cate and me. But if you be going away, Willem, I shall be
+staying to take care of mother here, till I can be making a home for
+her&mdash;yes, yes!' and he wrung William's hand as a token of brotherly love
+and trust.</p>
+
+<p>In a very few days William was on his way to Cardiff, having taken a
+grateful farewell of the vicar on the Sunday; for, although Cardiff was
+little more than nineteen miles away, even by the Caerphilly route, they
+were more than equal to ninety in these steam and railroad times.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>His mother parted from him with many rueful misgivings, and much good
+advice to resist the temptations sure to beset him in a wicked seaport
+town, much as an anxious country mother might in these days warn her
+untried son against the countless snares of London. And as she stitched
+her warmest flannel up into shirts for him, and looked up newly-knitted
+hose, her tears fell upon them silently as her prayers.</p>
+
+<p>His personal belongings did not occupy much space. A few tools,
+chap-books and papers, and his entire wardrobe were comfortably packed
+in his father's old goatskin saddle-bags; and Robert Jones, with whom he
+had had several conferences of late on the qualities of stone from
+different quarries, found him a good steady horse which could be left at
+the Angel Inn until Robert claimed it on his next errand to Cardiff.</p>
+
+<p>Robert Jones did him another service, the importance of which neither
+estimated at the time. He recommended him to apply for lodgings to a
+blind baker, named Walter Rosser, whose wife and niece were certain to
+make him comfortable.</p>
+
+<p>The baker's shop was easily found, but there was some little hesitation
+about admitting a stranger as an inmate.</p>
+
+<p>'What caused you to come hither in search of lodgings?' put the blind
+man, with his head on one side as if listening for the answer. 'And what
+may be your business in the town?'</p>
+
+<p>'Robert Jones the peat-cutter did advise me to come here. He said you
+was honest and respectable and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span> book-learned, and that you would be
+dealing fairly with me. And that your wife did be keeping your house as
+sweet and clean as my own mother kept the farm. My business do be to
+build for Mr. John Morris, look you!'</p>
+
+<p>'There's a clear ring in your voice, young man,' said the baker then.
+'And what may be your name?'</p>
+
+<p>'I am Willem Edwards, of Brookside Farm, Eglwysilan,' answered he, with
+proud decision&mdash;just a little nettled with the blind man's catechism.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh,' said the other, 'I think I have heard of you before. You did build
+Owen Wynn's flour-mill. Yes, yes, we shall be glad to have you, sir. You
+perceive my infirmity compels me to be particular whom we receive under
+our roof, since I have a young niece here, who has neither father nor
+mother to watch over her, and we are bound to be careful for her sake.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, yes, sure, quite right,' assented the young man, after a glance
+beyond the baker and his wife at a blushing damsel in the shade.</p>
+
+<p>Shops at that period were constructed much as are Turkish shops to this
+day. Very few had glazed windows. At night they were closed in by flap
+shutters, divided horizontally; the lower half of which was lowered in
+the daytime to serve as a table or counter for the display of goods, the
+upper half being so hooked up by an iron rod as to serve for a screen
+from sun or rain. The shop doors were similarly divided, the upper half
+hooking up to the low ceiling inside. I have known many such doors in
+country towns in England, some of which are, no doubt, extant to this
+day.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It will be readily understood that shops of this description, however
+small, were dark in the background, and to eyes less keen than
+William's, Elaine Parry's blush would have passed unnoticed. It required
+after-observation to perceive how neat and trim she always was, how
+bashful and retiring, and how quiet and subdued were all her movements;
+what a steadfast light there was in her clear, hazel eyes, and what
+pretty dimples in her cheeks when she smiled.</p>
+
+<p>He only noticed then that she remained quiescent when her uncle cried&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'Come in, sir&mdash;come in! I'll mind your horse whilst my good dame shows
+you the room we could let you have.'</p>
+
+<p>Up one or two short flights of stairs with landings turning this way or
+that, then down a step into a short, dark passage or recess containing
+two doors, and he was ushered into a small bedroom, which to him was the
+perfection of order and comfort&mdash;nay, luxury. True, there was only a
+narrow truckle bedstead, with a flock bed upon it, dowlas<a name="FNanchor_14_14" id="FNanchor_14_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a> sheets,
+and a dark blue woollen coverlet, but he had never been accustomed to
+anything better; and there was a diamond-paned casement, with a table in
+front, on which was a coarse earthenware basin and ewer, and, hung
+against the wall, a looking-glass about the size of a sheet of
+note-paper, all luxurious intimations that his personal ablutions might
+be conducted in private. Then there was a fireplace in the room&mdash;just a
+couple of short iron bars fitted into the brickwork&mdash;and beside it, in a
+recess, a piece of furniture which puzzled William<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span> extremely. Yet it
+was nothing more than an oaken bureau, the drawers of which Mrs. Rosser
+pulled open to show that they were for his use if he became their
+inmate. The mystery of the turn-down flap for writing, the sliding rests
+to support its weight, and the enclosed pigeon-holes for papers was a
+revelation for the future.</p>
+
+<p>He was almost afraid to ask 'How much?' and was wonderfully gratified to
+find the terms below his calculations, and also that he was expected to
+take his meals with the family.</p>
+
+<p>All that settled, the door across the dark passage was opened, and a
+room with a larger casement was revealed. Here all was equally clean,
+from the well-scrubbed floor to the centre table and tall chairs ranged
+with stiff precision against the walls, whilst a broad seat beneath the
+window held piles of books, and the empty fireplace was adorned with
+large conch shells.</p>
+
+<p>'You can come and sit here if you want to be quiet, and will not make a
+litter,' said Mrs. Rosser. 'We seldom use the room, except when my
+husband is teaching.'</p>
+
+<p>'Teaching?' echoed William curiously.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh yes; don't you know he teaches people to read English?'</p>
+
+<p>'Does what?' he almost gasped.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Rosser repeated her words.</p>
+
+<p>'Then Robert Jones has been doing me the best turn he ever did yet, for,
+look you, I've been wanting to learn English reading for many a year.'</p>
+
+<p>How it was possible for a blind man to give such<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span> instruction was beyond
+his comprehension. He accepted the statement as one more of the marvels
+he had come across in the baker's comfortable home; and he brought in
+his saddle-bags, and gave his horse in charge to the baker's man, as if
+he were not sure he was wide awake.</p>
+
+<p>He very soon discovered it was just the difference between living in a
+town of some antiquity within reach of a prosperous maritime city like
+Bristol, and dwelling apart among the mountain wilds, shut out from
+general intercourse, and dependent on itinerant packmen for everything
+but home produce.</p>
+
+<p>Even in his meals there was some difference. If he still breakfasted on
+porridge, he was unaccustomed to see meat or eggs on the table daily, or
+to find the oven substituted for the big pot in cookery, and he missed
+the potatoes in which they indulged on the farm.</p>
+
+<p>When the shyness between himself and Elaine Parry, Mrs. Rosser's pretty
+niece, had somewhat worn away, he told her this.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh,' said she, 'they are too dear for us. They are two shillings a
+pound in Cardiff market.'</p>
+
+<p>'No, indeed! Then I will tell Robert Jones. The farmers do be planting;
+they will be cheaper before long, look you.'</p>
+
+<p>And before very long a sack of good potatoes was set down by Robert
+Jones at the baker's door, a present from Brookside Farm.</p>
+
+<p>In the interim William Edwards had not been idle. The site selected for
+the smelting works was just outside Cardiff, and within easy reach of
+the river.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>There materials had been collected, and with the sole assistance of John
+Llwyd, he built, in the first instance, a blast-furnace on a small
+scale, tapering like a cone, the ore and fuel for which had to be
+supplied from the top, there being an orifice below from which the
+molten metal would escape in a stream.</p>
+
+<p>An ordinary smith's bellows worked by Llwyd supplied the blast, a good
+fire of peat and charcoal being well alight before the coal and
+broken-up ore were thrown in. It answered fairly for a trial, but once
+alight could not be allowed to cool night or day. But the furnace being
+built and in working order, there was no difficulty in finding men to
+tend and keep it going.</p>
+
+<p>Of course this was an experiment on too small a scale for commercial
+success. At all events William Edwards had mastered the great problem
+how to utilise anthracite or stone-coal for the smelting of iron. It was
+there burning without smoke or flame, and pouring out a thin stream of
+molten metal into the sandy moulds which shaped it into bars, or
+pig-iron.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Morris clapped his hand on William's shoulder, and congratulated him
+on his achievement.</p>
+
+<p>'Now, Edwards,' said he, 'you must lose no time in putting up another
+furnace or two on a larger scale. Let us show the world what genius and
+perseverance can accomplish.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, yes, sir; but I should like to improve on <i>that</i>,' pointing to
+what he had already done. 'And before building a larger furnace, I shall
+have to consider how the greater blast is to be sustained. It would be
+too<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span> heavy a task for manual labour if we are to keep large quantities
+of this hard coal at fusing heat for corresponding heaps of ore,' was
+the proud young fellow's reply.</p>
+
+<p>'No doubt, no doubt,' acquiesced Mr. Morris. 'But you will be certain to
+manage it in some way or other. And you know you are free to employ any
+workmen or materials you think best. Oh yes; when you set your foot on a
+difficulty you are sure to tread it down.'</p>
+
+<p>'Indeed and in truth, sir, I'm not willing to be beaten, and I don't
+mean to give in till I've conquered the obstacles here, look you,' said
+he, with set and resolute face.</p>
+
+<p>How he overcame the mechanical difficulty I have no data to determine
+after this lapse of time; but I incline to think he brought his friend
+Thomas Williams to construct a wheel, moved either by horse or water
+power, to supply the leverage required to keep the monster forge-bellows
+in motion. Twenty years later Smeaton invented the blowing machine for
+the Carron Foundry, in Scotland; but William Edwards was a mason and
+architect, not a mechanical engineer; and when he had completed his
+large furnace, capable of smelting with the hard stone-coal, he had
+achieved a victory likely to revolutionise the mining and iron-founding
+industries of South Wales&mdash;nay, almost to create them. He had saved its
+forest trees from utter annihilation. He had paved the way for Smeaton's
+feet to tread.</p>
+
+<p>Another furnace rose. The ironworks of John Morris<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span> extended and found
+occupation and bread for hundreds of workpeople besides those employed
+by himself. Fresh mines of coal and iron were opened around Castel Coch
+and elsewhere. Whole teams of pack-horses, tended by women and boys,
+were ever on the roads, bringing rough ore and coal to the smelters, the
+tinkling bell of each leader, or bell-horse, ringing a prophetic note of
+progression. It was some time before the invention of a low,
+broad-wheeled waggon, drawn by four or six horses, set these old teams
+aside; not, indeed, until something had been done to make the roads more
+practicable. And long before that, fresh shipping sought the old Cardiff
+quays to transport the pig-iron to final manufacturers alike in England
+and across the seas. Morris' smelting works seemed to have wakened the
+stagnant town from the lethargy of ages.</p>
+
+<p>All this was not the growth of a year or two. Eight full years was
+William Edwards working for Mr. Morris, and, whether consciously or not,
+for the advancement and prosperity of his country. Not alone was he
+occupied in erecting furnaces. Fresh workmen and their families required
+fresh homes, and who but William Edwards had the building? And for the
+period they were models. His name and fame as a builder travelled
+farther than his own feet.</p>
+
+<p>Yet it is not to be supposed that he stood still to let the stream of
+progress pass him by, now that he had opened the floodgates wide.</p>
+
+<p>Relays of men fed and tended the glowing furnaces night and day. The
+proud young architect<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span> and his contingent did their masonry in daylight
+hours.</p>
+
+<p>That did not mean inert repose or dissipation for him. He made holiday
+when his trial furnace was complete, to visit his mother and brothers
+and take part in his sister Jonet's wedding; but his brain was actively
+at work the whole time, and it was even on that busy occasion he set the
+bridegroom's mechanical brains at work also for mutual benefit.</p>
+
+<p>And whenever there was an interval between one great piece of work and
+another, he hired a horse and went home for a day or two, never without
+some useful or rare gifts for one and all, and never without calling on
+his old friends Robert Jones and Evan Evans by the way.</p>
+
+<p>Those were his only respites from work. His manual labour&mdash;for he worked
+alongside his men, and allowed no scamping or shirking&mdash;was over at
+dusk. But no sooner had he laid aside his tools, and washed away the
+tokens of his occupation, than he had a book in his hand&mdash;generally an
+English book, which he was doing his best to decipher unaided at his
+meals, as a preparation for private lessons, which the blind man gave to
+him by the household hearth, or in his bakehouse, or along with the
+adult class assembling twice a week in his upstairs parlour for English
+reading.</p>
+
+<p>In the bakehouse Rosser kept an alphabet, the separate letters of which
+were shaped and baked out of ordinary dough. And when the eager student
+had mastered the English pronunciation of these, which the blind man<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span>
+could distinguish by the touch, he traced syllables and words in his
+plastic medium, until ere long a well-known and well-thumbed book was
+put into the learner's hands to be spelt out, or read aloud, as he
+progressed.</p>
+
+<p>The blind baker was proud of his pupil.</p>
+
+<p>'You are the most promising scholar I ever took in hand,' said he; 'but
+your diligence is unremitting, and failure is impossible.'</p>
+
+<p>Yes, so diligent was he that in consequence of his absorption in his new
+study, Elaine Parry's shyness in his presence gradually wore away, and
+when she heard him stumbling over a word, she would pronounce it for him
+involuntarily, without so much as looking up from her sewing or
+knitting.</p>
+
+<p>Nay, the bashfulness became rather on his side at the betrayal of his
+own ignorance to a young girl, capable, through superior education, of
+correcting his slips and errors. But very soon he accepted her verbal
+hints as a matter of course.</p>
+
+<p>Later, when in a difficulty, he did not scruple to rise from his seat
+and cross the hearth to point out a phrase or passage he was unable to
+translate. And she, perchance, would lay down her work, glance at his
+book, and look calmly up in his face as she gave the true reading in a
+clear, firm voice.</p>
+
+<div class="center"><a name="i293.jpg" id="i293.jpg"></a><img src="images/i293.jpg" width='472' height='700' alt="ELAINE PARRY" /></div>
+
+<p class="bold">ELAINE PARRY.</p>
+
+<p>After a time, for easier reference, he brought his own seat near to
+hers, so that he might have her assistance without rising. And, although
+his dark-brown head and her light one were thus frequently drawn close
+together, his one idea had such thorough possession of him, that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span> his
+single-minded desire for knowledge disarmed the seeming familiarity of
+all obtrusiveness.</p>
+
+<p>Certainly, neither he nor Elaine had the slightest conception that
+anything was being taught or learned other than the King's English.</p>
+
+<p>She was too retiring and well behaved to thrust herself into the
+prominent notice of a stranger, so that after that first general
+impression that the baker's niece was a pretty and tidy young woman, he
+scarcely bestowed a second thought upon her.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Rosser's astounding intimation that her husband taught Welshmen to
+read English had swallowed up all minor considerations, just as the
+River Taff swallowed up all sorts of tributary streams in its course to
+the sea.</p>
+
+<p>Then, apart from his lingual studies, his furnace-building was ever on
+his mind. It was a very great and novel undertaking, and the whole force
+of his intelligence was brought to bear upon it.</p>
+
+<p>So that, although she moved before him in her daily occupations, and
+ministered to his necessities at meal-times, it was just as if a sister
+had been before his eyes continually. Certainly, she always wore shoes
+and stockings, and, on Sundays, the very set of her cloak and tall hat,
+and the border of white linen cap, had a grace and fitness most
+becoming. And she carried her English prayer-book to church so
+unobtrusively, and found her places so readily, he was bound to notice
+that; but <i>there</i> some envy blunted the edge of admiration.</p>
+
+<p>Her influence was that of summer dew on vegetation. It refreshes
+insensibly and imperceptibly. Had she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span> bustled about noisily, had there
+been any discord between her and her aunt, it would have arrested his
+attention with the jarring effect of a thunderstorm.</p>
+
+<p>As it was, she became part and parcel of his daily life, and it was not
+until he had been about three years in Cardiff that a slight illness
+which kept her in her own room for a week or ten days roused him to the
+consciousness how much he was indebted to her for the comfort and
+brightness of his surroundings.</p>
+
+<p>However intelligent a companion Walter Rosser might be&mdash;and he could
+talk both of the world and of books, having known both before blindness
+set in&mdash;he lacked just the touch of kindly appreciation so gratifying to
+the self-esteem of the rising young builder after years of
+home-snubbing; the word or two of discriminating opinion his niece gave
+so thoughtfully whenever doubts and difficulties beset him in the
+execution of his plans; for all was not fair sailing, clever as he might
+be, and there were times when he was glad of a sympathetic ear.</p>
+
+<p>He was restless and uneasy the whole time she lay ill upstairs, and was
+ready to ransack the town for tea, oranges, or any other over-sea luxury
+she might fancy. And he was never the same to her, or she to him, after
+she was back by the household fire, paler, but oh! how infinitely
+dearer!</p>
+
+<p>The touch of his horny hand, and the softened tones of his voice, said
+more than his commonplace words of greeting: ''Deed, Elaine, it's right
+glad we are to have you downstairs again. We have been missing you so
+terribly.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And there was more than the tremulousness of physical weakness in her
+low reply: 'Yes, and I am glad to be here. It is miserable to be shut up
+away from you all, giving aunt and you so much trouble; but we may bear
+with illness when friends are so kind.'</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTE:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_14_14" id="Footnote_14_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14_14"><span class="label">[14]</span></a> Dowlas, a coarse kind of linen.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>CHAPTER XXIII.</span> <span class="smaller">BRIDGE-BUILDING.</span></h2>
+
+<p>It so happened that when William Edwards had taken his first holiday, in
+1741, to be groomsman at the marriage of his sister Jonet with his
+friend Thomas Williams, that he had found Caerphilly&mdash;nay, all
+Eglwysilan&mdash;in a state of ferment, owing to the exciting presence in
+their midst of the noted preacher, the Rev. George Whitfield, for many
+years the colleague of the Rev. John Wesley, and only recently separated
+from him through doctrinal difference.</p>
+
+<p>They had alike left their pulpits in the Church to go preaching and
+teaching throughout the land, in the high-ways and by-ways, denouncing
+the vice and folly and sin then rampant, calling sinners to repentance,
+admonishing their hearers to lead simple, pure, and Christ-like lives,
+and preaching the acceptable year of the Lord, at the same time holding,
+as it were, the flaming sword of God's wrath over the impenitent.</p>
+
+<p>It should here be told that, finding his dear mother made light of by
+Cate, and set aside on the farm so very recently her own, William had
+himself taken the first opportunity that presented itself to remove her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span>
+and Jonet to a farm he had acquired in the Aber Valley&mdash;not far from his
+friend Thomas Williams&mdash;a farm for his mother and Davy to manage between
+them.</p>
+
+<p>His road hither, of course, lay through Caerphilly; and after having
+left the town behind him nearly two miles, he was surprised to find a
+concourse of people in a field by the wayside, not far from his own
+home, listening to a man in a clerical gown and bands, who stood on a
+pile of stones, and, with impassioned voice and gesture, besought his
+hearers to 'flee from the wrath to come.' His text had evidently been:
+'To-day if ye will hear His voice, harden not your heart;'<a name="FNanchor_15_15" id="FNanchor_15_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_15_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a> and he
+hammered at the 'to-day' until he drove it into the hearts of many
+around him. Women wept, men fell on their knees and called out aloud as
+emotion swayed them, and William sat like a statue until the last word
+was spoken and the preacher, worn out with his own fervour, turned to
+depart along with some friends of his own.</p>
+
+<p>William, like scores beside him, had gone to church and read his Bible
+as a duty; had learned the catechism the good vicar drilled into the
+youth of his flock; but beyond that his religion did not go very deep.</p>
+
+<p>George Whitfield's sermon, on which he had come so suddenly, was like
+the bow drawn at a venture, the sharp arrow from which smote the King of
+Israel between the joints of his armour; for so it pierced the heart of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span>
+the young man, whose very thought of late had been of furnace-building
+and of English study.</p>
+
+<p>The face, the voice, the manner of the earnest preacher haunted him no
+less than his awakening words. And when Davy, who had been also a
+listener, laid his hand upon the horse's bridle, and spoke to him, he
+started like one aroused from a dream.</p>
+
+<p>To suit general convenience&mdash;the old vicar's included&mdash;it had been
+arranged that Jonet and Thomas Williams should be married at St.
+Martin's, Caerphilly&mdash;then only a chapel-of-ease to Eglwysilan; and
+there a fresh surprise awaited William Edwards, for when, the following
+day, the united wedding party from Brookside and Aber dashed
+helter-skelter along the road to the church, in their race to catch the
+bride, he beheld a gravely-attired procession on foot, somewhat ahead of
+them, proceeding calmly in the same direction. And, when their own
+panting steeds had been left behind at a convenient inn, he observed
+that, of the more decorous bridal party entering the church porch, the
+bridegroom, a man of some twenty-seven years, was no other than that
+same Rev. George Whitfield, whose words had burnt themselves into his
+breast, never to be effaced, and his bride, Elizabeth James, whom he
+knew by sight.</p>
+
+<p>He could scarcely keep his eyes off the man, or his attention on the
+business before him. Yet he could not fail to notice that the aged
+vicar, who was growing feeble and tremulous, was apparently conscious he
+had no ordinary couple before him to unite in holy matrimony, and
+performed the ceremony for both parties with unusual<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span> impressiveness,
+undisturbed by the sounds of giggling and tittering in the rear.</p>
+
+<p>Such giggling and tittering were of common occurrence, as was the rough
+struggle for the first kiss of the newly-made bride, and the Rev. John
+Smith raised no voice in rebuke or protest when such a rush was made
+towards Jonet.</p>
+
+<p>Not so the evangelistic bridegroom. No sooner were their names signed in
+the register, than with his bride upon his arm, he quitted the church.
+Then, surrendering her to the care of the sedate groomsman, he mounted a
+tombstone, and with uplifted hand and voice demanded attention.</p>
+
+<p>So unwonted was the proceeding, that even the most hilarious paused and
+drew near out of mere curiosity; but when they left the chapelyard they
+had received such a lecture on the reverence due to the sacred place, on
+the solemnity of the ceremony they were present to witness, and on the
+import for time and eternity of the vows there made in the sight of
+God&mdash;such a lecture as few of those there assembled were likely to
+forget.</p>
+
+<p>At its close, William, withdrawing from his companions, walked up to Mr.
+Whitfield and thanked him heartily for his discourses, both there and
+the previous afternoon. 'You have roused me from spiritual apathy and
+carelessness into which I never shall sink again,' he said, with
+characteristic decision. 'And should you come to Cardiff before you
+leave South Wales, you may count on me as an awakened hearer.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The preacher's influence did not soon die away. William had other
+opportunities for joining in the services led by the enthusiastic
+preacher, and in his zeal prevailed on the blind baker and his niece to
+bear him company. Rosser's infirmity threw him much within himself.
+Elaine was naturally of a serious cast, and the eloquence of the
+powerful revivalist moved them both greatly.</p>
+
+<p>This was long before the girl's illness to which I have already
+referred. But as William and her uncle conversed together on the great
+truths they had heard so powerfully expounded, or joined in household
+prayer, there can be no doubt a link was forged and strengthened to draw
+the young people closer together, however insensibly, than if they had
+spent their leisure in light chatter and frivolous fooling. Yet nothing
+had been said in the course of years of either love or marriage.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile William had made himself conversant with English. Then, at the
+instance of Rosser, he procured the works of Sir Isaac Newton, and
+devoted himself to the study of geometry and kindred sciences with the
+assiduity of a man bent on success.</p>
+
+<p>Barely had he completed his furnaces for Mr. John Morris when proposals
+for like work came to him from other quarters, offering him most liberal
+and gratifying terms.</p>
+
+<p>Then, and not before, did he open out all his heart to Elaine, and,
+proud of the distinction it implied, pressed her to become his wife
+before he closed his engagement<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span> with his first patron, or entered upon
+a fresh one which would remove him to a distance.</p>
+
+<p>He had come upon Elaine in the twilight as she stood behind the
+flap-counter of her uncle's open shop, with a few unsold loaves upon the
+board, and, elate with the prospect before him, never doubted she who
+had grown so dear to his heart would gladly put her hand in his to share
+his rising fortunes.</p>
+
+<p>He drew her closer to him as he stood beside her in the shade, and met
+with no repulse, for she owned she knew his worth and loved him dearly,
+but his soaring spirit drooped its wings under a sudden check.</p>
+
+<p>'Nay, nay, dear William,' she said, amid slowly falling tears, 'it
+cannot be. How I shall miss you, and grieve for you in your absence,
+there is no telling; but though I can marry no one else, I cannot leave
+my good uncle and aunt now they are getting into years. They have been
+all the father and mother I have known.'</p>
+
+<p>'But, my dearest Elaine, do not daughters leave their parents to become
+wives? I never expected such an answer from <i>you</i>. Surely, when I took
+that farm in the Aber Valley years ago, had I no deeper meaning than to
+make my mother and David more comfortable? Had you no suspicion that one
+day I should want to place my wife there, and make a home for both of
+us?'</p>
+
+<p>Her tears dropped on the strong hand that held hers in its clasp, but
+she answered never a word.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'Elaine, dear Elaine,' he went on, 'I can enlarge the homestead, and
+extend the farm lands, so that your uncle and aunt could live with us
+all under one roof, if you will but consent.'</p>
+
+<p>'Don't, don't, William dear,' she sobbed. 'It is very, very kind of you,
+but it would never answer. You must not even suggest such a thing to my
+uncle. He is proud of his double calling as baker and teacher. How often
+have you heard him say with pride "he provided food for both body and
+mind; and no man with both his eyes could do more"? No, you would wound
+his self-dependence. I honour your good heart, but&mdash;I cannot leave
+them.'</p>
+
+<p>'Is there no one else can take your place, Elaine? How am I to leave you
+here alone?'</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head. 'They have no one but their married daughter in
+Bristol. What sort of a wife should I make if I failed in my duty to
+them? Besides, a wife just now would only cripple your freedom of
+action. We are both young enough to wait.'</p>
+
+<p>'Young enough if willing.' His obstinate temper was rising.</p>
+
+<p>'If it be God's will, it should be our will.' As she spoke she withdrew
+from his clasp.</p>
+
+<p>'Look you, Elaine!' he exclaimed, with something of his old passion.
+'The more a string is stretched, the sooner it breaks.' And away he went
+in high displeasure, leaving her standing there faint with her own
+effort at self-suppression.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It did not rest there. He was persistent. She was firm. And he had
+neither won her consent to marry, nor come to terms for the construction
+of fresh smelting works, when another project was on foot, which was to
+make or mar the man.</p>
+
+<p>I have said that roads were defective, and that bridges were needed to
+span rivers which cut off communication between town and town, county
+and county, and shut up the vast mineral wealth of South Wales.</p>
+
+<p>Herbert, the new Lord of Cardiff, had made the Castle his residence, the
+discoveries in connection with Mr. Pryse having determined him to see
+with his own eyes, and to delegate irresponsible authority to no one. He
+strengthened the hands of Mr. Morris in his efforts to utilise the iron
+and coal of the county, and to provide remunerative work for the
+depressed population. And he did what he could to improve, not merely
+the decaying town, but the rest of his vast possessions in
+Glamorganshire. He soon became keenly alive to the necessity for better
+communication with his property on the other side of the Taff than that
+of ferry, or ford, or coracle.</p>
+
+<p>In this he was by no means alone.</p>
+
+<p>Other landowners, magistrates, and men who saw fortunes buried beneath
+the soil, or losing half their value upon it for want of accessible
+markets, grumbled and growled on their own hearths, or to each other
+when they chanced to meet, until the discontent became so general that
+the heads of the county met<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span> in conclave at the Angel Inn in Cardiff,
+and decided on the erection of a stone bridge over the treacherous Taff.</p>
+
+<p>Then came the question, 'Who should be the builder?'</p>
+
+<p>'There is no better builder whatever in all South Wales than Mr. William
+Edwards,' said Mr. Morris, with decision.</p>
+
+<p>'Indeed, and that's the truth,' came simultaneously from various
+speakers.</p>
+
+<p>'But he has never erected a bridge, and he is so very young,' put in
+another dubiously. 'It will be a work of difficulty. We should engage an
+architect of established repute.'</p>
+
+<p>'He never put up a mill until he built Owen Wynn's flour-mill, and he
+never put up a furnace until he built mine,' replied Mr. Morris; 'and
+you all know what those are. But, young as he is, you may take my word
+for it he will undertake nothing he is not competent to carry out, and
+he is certain to accomplish whatever he has set his mind upon.'</p>
+
+<p>A good deal of heated argument followed this speech.</p>
+
+<p>The former speaker adhered to his suggestion that 'some one of more
+eminence should be engaged&mdash;such a man, for instance, as Mr. James
+Gibbs, an architect of note.'</p>
+
+<p>His lordship shook his head. 'Yes; Mr. Gibbs is an ecclesiastical
+architect of note, but you require a bridge, not a church, or a'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span>&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'What? That old <i>Scotchman</i>!' burst from impatient lips. 'Did he ever
+build a bridge? And what should a Scotchman know of our Welsh rivers?
+And what would he charge?'</p>
+
+<p>That suggestion of an exorbitant cost virtually settled the business
+before Mr. Morris rose again, and with a wave of the hand to calm the
+patriotic hubbub, remarked&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'I think, gentlemen, you will have to fall back on Mr. William Edwards.
+He is confessedly the best builder in all South Wales&mdash;a practical
+builder, not a mere architect. He was but a boy about nine years of age
+when he told me his father had been drowned in crossing the Eglwysilan
+ford, and that when he was a big man he would build a bridge there to
+save other lives. Believe me, he would put his heart into the work. And
+<i>he</i> is not an alien.'</p>
+
+<p>On the following day, September 16, 1746, three gentlemen, dressed in
+deep vests, full-skirted coats, and three-cornered hats, more or less in
+conformity with English wear, presented themselves at the baker's shop,
+and asked to see Mr. Edwards.</p>
+
+<p>They were shown upstairs into the class-room parlour by Elaine, and then
+she tapped gently at William's door opposite in the dark passage, and
+told him he was wanted.</p>
+
+<p>He was at that moment seated, pen in hand, in front of his bureau-desk,
+with a sheet of paper before him, on which he had begun to indite his
+acceptance of the smelter's proposal.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Who could be wanting him?</p>
+
+<p>Down went his quill; he thrust his arms into the short-tailed coat hung
+over his chair back, gave himself a shake, and in less than two minutes
+he was face to face with Mr. Morris and two strangers, to whom he was
+formally introduced as <i>Mr.</i> William Edwards. They were magistrates, and
+men of note in the county, deputed to lay before him the project for
+bridging over the Taff, and ascertain his willingness to undertake its
+construction.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Morris had placed himself in the broad window seat, his friends had
+drawn a couple of the high-backed chairs between the window and the
+table to bring them closer together, and as William stood there with the
+full light of the setting sun upon his somewhat square features, they
+could perceive him start and rest one strong nervous hand upon the
+table, whilst his broad nostrils quivered, his bright clear eyes lit up,
+and his face flushed, only to whiten under the excitement of their
+proposal, and the remembrance of the unfinished letter upon his desk.</p>
+
+<p>There could be no second thought of his acceptance.</p>
+
+<p>'Willing to undertake it, gentlemen?' he said breathlessly. 'Competent?
+It has been my dream from boyhood; though I owe the first suggestion to
+a jesting hint from Mr. Morris. Stay, I will show you.'</p>
+
+<p>In less than three minutes he had fetched from the bureau in the other
+room&mdash;where he left a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span> crumpled-up letter&mdash;several drawings of bridges
+in all stages of architectural finish, from the first rude conception of
+his youth, to the riper studies of manhood.</p>
+
+<p>By the time his contract with Mr. Morris expired, his design for the
+proposed bridge had been considered and approved, as also the site,
+close upon the Eglwysilan ford, midway between Merthyr Tydvil and
+Cardiff, so as to unite the already beaten road.</p>
+
+<p>He was elate and buoyant over the trust reposed in him; although Rhys,
+his mother, Davy, and other friends had been called upon to enter into
+bonds for the fulfilment of his contract, since he was to be paid as the
+work proceeded.</p>
+
+<p>The intending smelter, desirous to secure his services, consented to
+wait until he was again at liberty.</p>
+
+<p>The young architect's pride had but one drawback. He could not shake
+Elaine's fidelity to her uncle and aunt. She would not desert them in
+their old age.</p>
+
+<p>'It will be better for you to go to this great work unfettered by a
+wife,' she argued bravely.</p>
+
+<p>But he would not see the personal sacrifice she made, and went off at
+last in a huff.</p>
+
+<p>'This new business will be his solace,' she said. 'I must be content to
+do my duty, and leave the rest to God.'</p>
+
+<p>And neither her aunt nor her blind uncle knew the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span> temptation she had
+resisted for their sakes, though they thought her quieter than before.</p>
+
+<p>She was right. His new business left William little leisure for looking
+back.</p>
+
+<p>He had gone over to Bristol to engage masons, in addition to those he
+had already trained, before he finally took leave.</p>
+
+<p>Then there was no running back. His first duty was to erect huts or
+houses for his workpeople and their families; and he took care they were
+such as should be of service when the temporary purpose was served.</p>
+
+<p>He had long before made John Llwyd his foreman&mdash;a good deputy on whom he
+could rely; just as he could depend on his old friend Robert Jones for
+the best of stone from the very best local quarries, or for his sand and
+lime. For the carriage of other matters to and fro he fell back on
+Robert's active young partner Hughes, for whom the peat-cutter's niece
+had jilted easy-going Davy.</p>
+
+<p>But ere the foundations of the bridge were laid and firm, the builder
+had engaged his brother-in-law, Thomas Williams, to supply the wooden
+frames on which his arches were to be fitted and adjusted. And so, with
+trustworthy coadjutors like these, the work went on steadily.</p>
+
+<p>At first he had to battle with the deceitful river; but he and his men
+watched the skies and did their best to prevent disaster, though more
+than one occurred.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But the resolution of their master seemed infused into the men. If there
+was any doubt or hazard, he took the tools himself, and wrought until
+they were ashamed to hang back.</p>
+
+<p>Though he had a farm of his own but two miles or so away, and his
+brother's farm was close at hand, he occupied one of the new cottages
+along with Llwyd, and so was always on the spot.</p>
+
+<p>Besides that, he fared almost as his men fared. If a labourer's wife or
+child fell sick he helped them from his own stores or pocket; and his
+men worked all the better for his thoughtful kindness.</p>
+
+<p>His bridge-building had brought quite a colony upon the spot, not merely
+of the workpeople, but of others, who found they had money to spend and
+wants to be supplied.</p>
+
+<p>Soon he become conscious of another want. The Rev. John Smith, the kind
+old vicar, had died full of years shortly after Jonet's marriage, and
+the new vicar did not seem to recognise the strangers as part of his
+flock. So William, finding the non-observance of the Sabbath led to
+disorder, called the people round him, and from the Druids'
+rocking-stone read out portions of Scripture to them, now and then
+venturing on expositions of his own.</p>
+
+<p>So the weeks and the seasons rounded until at the end of two years there
+stood a fine three-arched bridge across the river, to be opened with
+loud acclaim and rejoicing&mdash;a bridge the excited guarantors pronounced
+firm and solid enough to stand as surely for seventy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span> years as seven,
+the period for which its stability was guaranteed.</p>
+
+<p>'Indeed!' exclaimed the proud young builder. 'It is more likely to stand
+firm for seven hundred years!'</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTE:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_15_15" id="Footnote_15_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15_15"><span class="label">[15]</span></a> Psalm xcv. 7, 8.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>CHAPTER XXIV.</span> <span class="smaller">PONT-Y-PRIDD.</span></h2>
+
+<p>It was a glorious day for the self-taught architect. The hanging woods
+on either bank of the river held nearly as many spectators as trees,
+whilst along the narrow roads came a motley multitude on foot or
+horseback, or in cumbrous, top-heavy leather carriages, drawn by four
+horses (less for state than necessity), poor as well as rich having
+assembled from all parts to witness the opening of the new bridge that
+was to do so much for the county.</p>
+
+<p>'To witness my triumph,' William Edwards phrased it. But then, too much
+diffidence was not the family failing. And, for a self-taught man, it
+<i>was</i> a triumph.</p>
+
+<p>There was no room for two carriages to pass abreast, but the few there
+assembled crossed alternately, the Viscount's prancing horses leading
+the way. Then there was a rush of people, mounted and on foot; horses,
+ponies, mules, and asses scampering across pell-mell in such wild
+confusion and entanglement, amid shouts and untranslatable cries, as
+certainly tested the stability of the structure. And such
+congratulations greeted the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span> builder as were calculated to turn more
+seasoned heads than his.</p>
+
+<p>Davy, full of brotherly pride and affection, had brought his mother on a
+pillion behind him; and there, surrounded by her children and her
+grandchildren, the old dame, overcome by her emotion in contrasting the
+present with the past, and witnessing the great work of her son and his
+reception by the gentry, fairly sobbed aloud, the big tears rolling down
+her tanned and wrinkled cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>'Name o' goodness, mother, I don't be knowing what you have got to cry
+for, whatever. People do be looking at you!' remarked Rhys curtly, on a
+hint from Cate.</p>
+
+<p>''Deed, I do be crying for joy. I never expected to be seeing a day like
+this.'</p>
+
+<p>'Do leave mother alone, Rhys,' quickly remonstrated Davy in an
+undertone. 'Her heart do be full, and it must run over, look you.'</p>
+
+<p>Evan Evans and Ales stood by, dressed in their Sunday best for the great
+occasion, a newly-breeched boy by the hand.</p>
+
+<p>'I do be wishing Jane Edwards would not be washing the new bridge with
+her tears, Evan&mdash;'deed, I do,' whispered Ales to him.</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, yes, it do be a bad baptism,' he echoed, shaking his head, which
+had been crammed with superstition on shipboard. 'And I do be hoping the
+rain will keep off, for the clouds be gathering over Garth Mountain,
+look you.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The rain did keep off for two or three hours, until long after the
+hand-shaking and speech-making were over, and the great people had
+dispersed, and all who had not stayed behind to feast were on their way
+homewards, thankful they would be able in future to cross the river
+dry-shod and out of danger, whatever the hour or the weather, the
+'cleverness' of the Widow Edwards' son being on every tongue.</p>
+
+<p>That son, however, had been surfeited with praise, and was moving
+amongst the crowds in irritable reaction seeking for some one he failed
+to find&mdash;some one whose approbation would have o'ertopped the highest.</p>
+
+<p>At last, when he was ready to bite his lips with vexation, a boy, who
+came riding hastily from the Cardiff Road, put a letter in his hand, and
+lingered as if waiting for an answer.</p>
+
+<p>The writing was Elaine's.</p>
+
+<p>The letter was torn open impatiently.</p>
+
+<p>Only a few blotted words:&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>'<span class="smcap">Dear Friend</span>,&mdash;We hear your meritorious work is complete, and send
+you our heartfelt greetings; but we are in great trouble, for Uncle
+Rosser had a fit last night, and has not spoken since. Aunt is full
+of grief. She has sent to Bristol for my cousin, for the apothecary
+says uncle cannot live. You will pardon our absence to-day; and
+believe me, your sincere well-wisher,</p>
+
+<p class="right">'<span class="smcap">Elaine Parry</span>.'</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>Two hours later he had left the feasters and was in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a></span> the saddle, muffled
+in a thick riding-coat, speeding on to Cardiff through driving rain and
+the darkening shades of evening.</p>
+
+<p>When he drew rein at the baker's door he was too late for all but
+consolation. The blind man had opened his long-closed eyes on the
+glorious wonders of eternity.</p>
+
+<p>Never had Elaine felt so much the need of his strong arm and
+self-reliant individuality as then, in their overwhelming affliction.
+His unexpected arrival touched a sensitive chord and broke down the
+barriers between them. She sprang towards him, and clung to him weeping,
+as she had never done before.</p>
+
+<p>Amazement checked the flow of Mrs. Rosser's tears for the moment; and
+when he put out his hand to grasp hers, she too felt there was a strong
+friend to rely on in their extremity.</p>
+
+<p>Then was it first observed that he was wringing wet; and in hospitable
+cares for the long absent, the first acuteness of pain was something
+blunted.</p>
+
+<p>After that, as if he had been Mrs. Rosser's own son, he took all
+miserable details off their feminine hands. It was he, too, who met the
+daughter&mdash;Mrs. Elton&mdash;and her Bristolian husband on their arrival, and
+broke the distressing intelligence to them.</p>
+
+<p>Death involves changes. No sooner was the dead laid in the earth than
+the desirability of the widow's future residence with her daughter was
+openly discussed. Consideration for Elaine appeared the only obstacle to
+the plan.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'I am quite willing to make a home for my mother-in-law,' said Mr. Elton
+in private to Mr. Edwards, with a show of self-complacent liberality,
+much as though he patted himself on the back for a praiseworthy
+sacrifice, ignoring the savings of years likely to bear her company;
+'but I cannot consent to burden myself with the young woman. And she
+cannot really expect it. She is no relation of mine or my wife's. She
+must look out for a situation. She quite blocks the way to an amicable
+adjustment of affairs,' he added irritably.</p>
+
+<p>William speedily removed <i>that</i> block out of their way.</p>
+
+<p>'Do not trouble yourself about Elaine, sir,' put in William stiffly.
+'There has been a situation waiting for her over two years.'</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Elton opened his eyes. 'Indeed!'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, sir. Two years back I pressed her to become my honoured <i>wife</i>,
+but her strong, sense of duty constrained her to repress her own
+inclinations, and send me away wifeless rather than desert her aunt and
+uncle in their old age. You can adjust your affairs irrespective of
+Elaine Parry, I can assure you. A good home and a loving welcome await
+her.'</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Elton was snubbed, and looked it.</p>
+
+<p>In less than three months there was a very quiet wedding at Cardiff, and
+Elaine went away with her husband to his farm, midway between his bridge
+and the ruined Castle of Caerphilly, where his old mother and Davy
+lived, within easy reach of Jonet and her husband. The few houses have
+multiplied since then into a village that bears the name of Aber.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>At first old Mrs. Edwards felt as if she was to be a second time
+deposed. And she expected Elaine's town ways would clash with her
+country ones. But when she found that Elaine deferred to her as she had
+done to her own aunt, and was desirous to be instructed in all that
+pertained to her duties on the farm, there was no word too good for her
+'clever son William's clever wife.'</p>
+
+<p>Then she could already knit and spin, and had brought her own wheel, as
+well as a shelf of books, and something in hard cash, so that, as Davy
+said, she was 'quite an acquisition on the farm.'</p>
+
+<p>William had built the house according to his enlarged ideas of domestic
+comfort. There were two storeys, and notwithstanding the very heavy tax
+on glass, it shone in every window, and these were of useful size. He
+had brought home along with his wife the bureau he had found so useful
+for his papers, and kept them and his books in a room set apart for
+himself.</p>
+
+<p>With the completion of the bridge, he abandoned to John Llwyd the
+cottage he had erected on the river's side, his new furnace work being
+within sufficiently accessible distance of the farm, so long as he could
+leave his efficient foreman on the spot, and his workmen also. He was
+glad then he had erected permanent and commodious houses for the men,
+instead of temporary huts, since there was still employment for them
+all. Explorations for iron and coal were going on in the vicinity. These
+created a fresh demand for labour, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</a></span> a corresponding demand for roofs
+to shelter the newcomers.</p>
+
+<p>As he beheld the new colony of labourers and managers rising up, as it
+were, under his auspices, his heart swelled with pride and
+self-sufficient inflation.</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, yes,' he would say to his wife, 'this is all my doing. I told Rhys
+I would be the greater man. Yes, he must own it now, if he would not
+then. Look at my wonderful bridge. It will stand for ever.'</p>
+
+<p>He was saying something of the kind one morning, when his first-born, a
+boy he had named David after his brother, was about eighteen months old.
+He had the child on his knee at the time.</p>
+
+<p>Elaine had a shuddering dread upon her whenever she heard his boastful
+words.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, William dear,' she said soberly, 'we know your skill is great, but
+I wish you would not boast of the stability of your bridge so often. We,
+as well as the bridge, are in the hands of the Almighty!'</p>
+
+<p>He put the child down hastily and rose to his feet. 'Surely, Elaine, you
+are not going to join the croakers? Rhys told me the other day, "Not to
+hold my head so high, for pride was sure to have a fall." Sure, I have a
+right to be proud if any one has.'</p>
+
+<p>'<i>If?</i>' murmured Elaine under her breath; but he caught the doubtful
+word, and, snatching at his hat, strode out of the house angrily.</p>
+
+<p>A thick mantle of snow covered hill and valley, against which the
+whitewashed houses looked grey and dingy.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'It do be thawing fast,' said Davy to him as they met at the gate, he
+with a spade over his shoulder. 'I do hope the rain will be keeping off
+till the snow be all gone. But I don't be liking the looks of the clouds
+in the north-west.'</p>
+
+<p>'Why not?' questioned William sharply.</p>
+
+<p>Davy hesitated. 'Well, if the rain do come upon the melting snow, we
+shall be having heavy floods.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, and what then?' snappily.</p>
+
+<p>''Deed, and I do be always thinking of the bridge when the floods come.'</p>
+
+<p>'Pouf! the bridge is safe if a hundred floods come.' And on he went,
+ruffled, but wrapped in self-opinionated vanity. He had forgotten George
+Whitfield and his Master then.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, he went to take a look at the bridge and the river, on his
+way to the new ironworks, where his first furnace was already at work.</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, well,' he thought, 'the water <i>is</i> high; but, pouf! that is no
+flood.'</p>
+
+<p>Towards afternoon a thin rain began to fall and liquefy the melting
+snow. As the men were leaving work, Llwyd came up to him with an anxious
+face and whispered, 'Master, the river do be desperately full, and if'&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>William looked as if he could have struck his faithful monitor to the
+earth.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, the river was rising and racing through the three arches with the
+swiftness of a torrent, surcharged with hay and straw, brushwood and
+mould, washed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</a></span> downward in its course, but they swept well under the
+bold archways and swirled away in eddies beyond.</p>
+
+<p>'There can be no danger. Those piers are firm enough,' he muttered, as
+if to convince himself as well as Llwyd.</p>
+
+<p>Dusk came down and blotted out the scene. In turning away he came upon
+Rhys, whose gloomy face it was well he could not see.</p>
+
+<p>Llwyd and Davy too were there, with other watchers who had helped to
+rear the bridge.</p>
+
+<p>'Tell Elaine I shall stay with Llwyd to-night,' said William to Davy. It
+was his first note of apprehension. Towards midnight he said, 'If the
+rain ceases there can be no danger.'</p>
+
+<p>But the rain did not cease. As the night fled and the morning hours
+advanced, the winds came howling and tearing like demons down the Taff
+Valley, driving the pelting rain before them in a mad hurricane,
+fighting for mastery alike with tall green pines and the bare boughs of
+elms and gnarled oaks.</p>
+
+<p>Gradually, as lapping waters undermined rocks and rugged banks, already
+loosened by frost and melting snows, along many a swollen mountain
+stream the surging torrent bore down their tributary reeds and shrubs
+and earth, along with riven boughs and uptorn trees, that beat like
+battering-rams against the good stone piers, holding their trust so
+sturdily. Then, eddying, the mighty current of the mocking Taff swung
+the tall fir-trees round and barred the still open arches cross-wise,
+one by one. Here, as in a net, the lament<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[Pg 322]</a></span>able wreckage of the moors, of
+ruined cots and devastated farms, was caught and built up into a dam the
+turbid water could neither pass nor wash away. And rising, still rising,
+rising swifter than the rising sun, like a gigantic monster playing with
+boulder stones for bowls, the resistless river hammered with them
+against the parapet, and beat it in. Then, with a tumultuous roar as of
+triumph, and a deafening crash that startled sleepers in their beds more
+than a mile distant, the bridge that was built for centuries was swept
+away into irreparable ruin.</p>
+
+<p>A shriek, as of mortal horror, rose as an echo from the crowded banks.
+The three brothers and their friends looked in each other's whitened
+faces as the cost of the catastrophe cut keenly into their souls.</p>
+
+<p>Rhys groaned aloud.</p>
+
+<p>'There does never have been such an awful flood since I was born; no
+masonry whatever could be standing against it,' cried grey-headed Owen
+Griffith, as he leant upon his staff to bear up against the wind.</p>
+
+<p>He had seen the darkening glances cast on the luckless architect, and
+interposed to spare him the reproaches of coarse tongues.</p>
+
+<p>'Keep that consolation for those who have run no risk. It will not be
+saving Cate and the rest from ruin and beggary, through this braggart
+brother of mine and his bridge,' burst from ungovernable Rhys.</p>
+
+<p>'It may <i>save</i> me and you all from ruin,' retorted William defiantly. 'I
+have discovered what a flood can do, and what must be guarded against.
+Before the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[Pg 323]</a></span> term of our guarantee expires, I will span this river with a
+bridge no flood shall wash away. 'Deed I will.'</p>
+
+<p>A crowd had gathered. There were mocking voices heard beside Rhys'. A
+quarrel and a tumult threatened; for fierce as the war of the elements
+was the tempest raging in the breasts of men who had been closest
+friends.</p>
+
+<p>'Come away,' cried placable Davy, linking his arm within William's, and
+looking round him. 'When the Lord do be speaking men should be silent.
+Yes, and before the breath of His nostrils the best man's handiwork will
+go down, look you.' And whispering something to his baited brother of
+'home' and 'Elaine,' he drew him peaceably away.</p>
+
+<p><i>He</i> had no word of reproach, though he had staked the savings of his
+life, equally with Rhys, and his forbearance silenced others, then and
+afterwards.</p>
+
+<p>Nor did any reproaches or taunts meet William at his own fireside.
+Rumour had run fleetfooted before them with the disastrous tidings. The
+shock had thus been anticipated. Clasping arms and sympathetic words
+alone awaited him. 'It is the will of God,' said both mother and wife;
+'it is useless to rebel.'</p>
+
+<p>Strange to say, William Edwards was apparently the least cast down of
+any. In a day or two he had recovered much of his elasticity. He showed
+a brave face to friends and envious foes, and maintained that no man
+should forfeit his guarantee. He would replace the wrecked bridge with a
+better.</p>
+
+<p>There were men who sneered; there were more who<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[Pg 324]</a></span> sympathised, for the
+rebuilding would be at his own cost, and would sweep away all his former
+gains. Yet all friends did not desert him. Mr. Morris and the Viscount
+defended him against malicious attacks on 'unqualified pretenders.' No
+one could deny the vehement pressure of the terrible flood.</p>
+
+<p>His newer plan, a bridge of <i>a single arch</i>, and of a span
+unprecedented, was seen and approved.</p>
+
+<p>Workmen were not far to seek. Almost with the subsidence of the waters
+labourers were at work removing the still upstanding remains of the old
+piers, the tenacity of the masonry giving the undaunted builder fresh
+hope.</p>
+
+<p>On fresh foundations another bridge arose, Jonet's husband marvelling at
+the measurements supplied for the wooden framework.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes,' said William, whose pride and self-assumption rose as he surveyed
+the magnificent proportions of his bridge, 'I defy any flood to beat
+that down. Look at its breadth and height! Any volume of water could
+sweep under that arch! Yes, indeed, if it brought half a forest down
+with it. The piers were the mistake before, Thomas.'</p>
+
+<p>''Deed, yes!' assented the other.</p>
+
+<p>The keystone of the arch had been laid; time had been given for cement
+to harden; the wooden framework of the arch was being removed when this
+was said; only the parapets were wanting, and on those the men were
+beginning.</p>
+
+<p>Another day the last scrap of timber was gone.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[Pg 327]</a></span> Rhys had come down
+sullenly to the water's edge, weighted by his responsibility, and too
+doubtful of his brother's skill to give even his perseverance credit.
+There he found Jonet and Elaine, each with an infant in her arms. A few
+idlers stood staring and gaping under the trees on the steep banks.</p>
+
+<p>All at once, with no more premonitory shock than a slight tremulous
+motion under foot that scared the working masons away, the keystone of
+the arch shot up into the air like a ball; the centre of the arch seemed
+to rise bodily and press upwards like an inverted V, as if impelled by
+superhuman force from the sides; there was a report as of a tremendous
+gunpowder explosion, a blinding shower of dust and flying stones
+whirling in mid air, a wide gap where a noble structure had been five
+minutes before.</p>
+
+<p>Draw a curtain over the scene of the collapse. Close the ears to the
+taunts and mockery, the scorn and derisive epithets, which assail the
+unfortunate architect wheresoever he goes. Everywhere, save under his
+own roof, where wife and mother and Davy combined to shield him. But
+only his wife can enter into his feelings, and alleviate his bitter
+humiliation. Where he is weak, she is strong, and her very touch is
+healing.</p>
+
+<div class="center"><a name="i325.jpg" id="i325.jpg"></a><img src="images/i325.jpg" width='438' height='700' alt="ONLY HIS WIFE CAN ENTER INTO HIS FEELINGS, AND ALLEVIATE
+HIS BITTER HUMILIATION" /></div>
+
+<p class="bold">ONLY HIS WIFE CAN ENTER INTO HIS FEELINGS, AND ALLEVIATE<br />
+HIS BITTER HUMILIATION.&mdash;<i>See page 327.</i></p>
+
+<p>Let us follow him into his little private room, and find him on his
+knees acknowledging in all humility his self-sufficient dependence on
+himself, his proud and confident trust in his own skill, his
+forgetfulness of the Lord, omnipotent alike to create and to destroy,
+from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[Pg 328]</a></span> whom he derived whatever mental superiority he possessed, who had
+led him step by step to success, who had spoken to him by the warning
+voice of George Whitfield, and at last had broken his stubborn heart,
+and, with the thunders of calamity, brought him to acknowledge that,
+'Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it.'</p>
+
+<p>Out of that room he walked that day another manner of man.</p>
+
+<p>He was the first to confess that the haunches or side foundations of his
+bridge had not sufficient strength to bear the strain of the lofty and
+expansive arch he had imposed upon them. But he added, '<i>Please God</i>, I
+will yet, <i>with His help</i>, fulfil my contract, and build a bridge that
+shall stand, even if it leave me penniless.'</p>
+
+<p>Fonder was Elaine of her husband in his humility and misfortune than in
+the pride of his success.</p>
+
+<p>Davy had always stuck by him. 'He set no store by his bit of money
+whatever. William was welcome to every penny, if it was any good.'</p>
+
+<p>Others, richer than Davy, who had held aloof from the 'self-confident
+amateur,' as they called him, were moved by his newly-developed modesty,
+no less than by his indomitable perseverance and resolution (Rhys called
+it obstinacy) in the face of catastrophes that would have overwhelmed
+weaker men. And they honoured his integrity. When his fresh plans were
+ready, funds to 'assist' were ready also.</p>
+
+<p>Over those plans he had pondered and prayed. Like<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[Pg 329]</a></span> a flash it came to
+his mind that, as the single arch was a strength in masonry, a double
+arch&mdash;that is, a circle&mdash;must have double strength, and on that he
+formed his plan, to bind the haunches of his bridge with cylinders of
+decreasing sizes, not to narrow his span of arch.</p>
+
+<p>Once more the river-bed was cleared. But on the Sunday, before a stone
+of the new bridge was laid, he summoned his workpeople around him in the
+Druids' circle, and, standing upon the rocking-stone, he preached to
+them from the text, 'Except the Lord build the house, they labour in
+vain that build it,' telling the story of his sudden conversion, of the
+failure of his other bridges as providential instruments to save him
+from overweening arrogance and self-sufficiency; and wound up with an
+exhortation that they should lay every stone as if they laid it before
+the Lord, who alone could decide whether this or that man's work was
+good or bad.</p>
+
+<p>And so, week by week, as the work went on, Sunday by Sunday he preached
+and prayed amongst his men on that Druidical altar, consecrating it
+afresh to the living God, and dedicating himself and his life to the
+service of Christ.</p>
+
+<p>In like manner, when the last coping-stone was in its place, and his
+workmen had gathered up their tools to depart, he knelt down upon the
+bridge, and dedicated that with prayer, saying at the last, 'Keep Thy
+servant from presumptuous sins. And be the glory Thine, O Lord.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[Pg 330]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Thus, in 1755, when William Edwards was but thirty-six, he had completed
+his trinity of bridges over the terrible Taff. And there to this day it
+stands, fair to see, with the date of its erection upon it, a bridge
+with a wider span than the Venetian Rialto&mdash;a bridge pierced by three
+hollow cylinders on either side, rising gracefully with the magnificent
+arch as they decrease in size.<a name="FNanchor_16_16" id="FNanchor_16_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_16_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a></p>
+
+<p>Upon the opening day, apart from the peasantry, the magnates of three
+counties flocked to see this wonder of a bridge, and the indomitable man
+who had created it, in the face of difficulties that would have daunted
+weaker men.</p>
+
+<p>As one by one Welshmen of note bent from horse or carriage to shake
+hands with Mr. Edwards and congratulated him on the unrivalled structure
+his genius had created, and he was heard to say modestly in reply, 'I
+trust, with the blessing of God, <i>this</i> bridge will stand,' even Rhys
+admitted that, ''Deed, after all, Willem was a great man,' and Thomas
+Williams kept close beside him, as if desirous to share in his
+employer's glory.</p>
+
+<p>For Mr. Morris, the staunch friend of William Edwards, there with due
+ceremony, breaking a bottle of wine upon the parapet, had named the
+bridge 'Pont-y-Pridd'&mdash;The Bridge of Beauty.</p>
+
+<div class="center"><a name="i331.jpg" id="i331.jpg"></a><img src="images/i331.jpg" width='433' height='700' alt="THE BRIDGE OF BEAUTY, 1755" /></div>
+
+<p class="bold">THE BRIDGE OF BEAUTY, 1755.</p>
+
+<p>And when the loud acclaim had subsided, the speaker gave as a reason for
+the name, not alone the wondrous beauty of the structure, or the new
+features the self-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[Pg 333]</a></span>trained builder had introduced into
+bridge-building, but that out of his failures he had built up an
+undoubted success, and out of seeming calamities built up another, if an
+unseen bridge, to span the turbulent River of Life and bear him securely
+across from this world to a better, the beautiful bridge of humble
+reliance on the Almighty Creator and Ruler of the universe.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTE:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_16_16" id="Footnote_16_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16_16"><span class="label">[16]</span></a> The largest is nine feet in diameter.</p></div>
+</div>
+<hr />
+
+<h2><span>POSTSCRIPT.</span></h2>
+
+<p>From that day William Edwards' fame as a builder of bridges and smelting
+works was assured. But he could see defects in his Bridge of Beauty; the
+ascent to the centre was steep and toilsome, and although he was
+afterwards called upon to erect bridges, not only in Glamorganshire, but
+in Carmarthenshire and Brecknockshire, he built no more on the same
+model.</p>
+
+<p>His handsome three arched bridge over the Teify is pierced with hollow
+cylinders over the piers, adding beauty to strength; but in that as in
+others he reduced the height with more regard to the useful than the
+picturesque.</p>
+
+<p>He was a busy man, working for his family and the community six days a
+week, giving the seventh to divine service amongst his people&mdash;services
+so highly appreciated that in 1756 he was ordained to preach.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[Pg 334]</a></span> And he
+was never a rich man, he gave so largely of his earnings to the
+suffering poor. And though he must have seen towns springing up around
+the ironworks he built, and highroads made to connect them, giving
+employment to hundreds of workers, he was nevermore heard to boast of
+<i>his</i> doings. He knew and owned that the capital of other men had set
+his brains and hands at work.</p>
+
+<p>And when at a ripe old age he was laid to rest under the shade of
+Eglwysilan Church and its giant yews, he left his well-trained son David
+to inherit his fame and his faculty as a bridge-builder. But he never
+built a Pont-y-Pridd, and it is with the bridge and town of Pontypridd
+William Edwards' name is mainly associated, even by those who never
+recognise in him a pioneer of progress, a benefactor to South Wales.</p>
+
+<p>Indeed, since his day, to meet the increasing traffic, a canal has been
+cut from Cardiff northward, and the very course of the River Taff
+diverted, changing the character of the district I have attempted to
+describe as it was in my hero's day. More recently a railroad to meet
+the ever-growing demands of ironmasters, colliery owners, and others,
+has been constructed, still further changing the face of the country,
+now bristling with iron and tin works. A new bridge has, moreover, been
+thrown across the river, somewhat higher up the stream, a bridge more in
+accord with modern requirements, and which has in a measure superseded
+high-pitched Pont-y-Pridd; but the beautiful old bridge is still
+standing, a picturesque monument to the memory<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[Pg 335]</a></span> of its persevering and
+pious builder, and a reminder to this self-sufficient generation, so
+proud of its own grand doings, that, but for William Edwards and his
+bridges and furnaces, progress in South Wales might have slumbered a
+generation or more.</p>
+
+<p class="tbrk">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="center">THE END.</p>
+
+<p class="tbrk">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="center">PRINTED BY MORRISON AND GIBB LIMITED, EDINBURGH</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[Pg 336]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p class="bold"><i>A Selection from Books for Girls.</i></p>
+
+<hr class="smler" />
+
+<p class="center">At 3/6</p>
+
+<p>KEITH'S TRIAL AND VICTORY. By <span class="smcap">Evelyn Everett-Green</span>. Illustrated
+by <span class="smcap">Paul Hardy</span>. Gilt edges.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>A well-written story of a young girl of high position, who,
+disappointed in her expectations as an heiress, learns nobly her
+lesson of self-conquest.</p></blockquote>
+
+<hr class="smler" />
+
+<p class="center">At 3/6</p>
+
+<p>CONSTANCIA'S HOUSEHOLD. A Story of the
+Spanish Reformation. By <span class="smcap">Emma Leslie</span>, Author of "Caught in
+the Toils." Illustrated.</p>
+
+<hr class="smler" />
+
+<p class="center">At 3/6</p>
+
+<p>UNDER THE WAR-CLOUDS. A Tale of 1870. By <span class="smcap">E. F. Pollard</span>. With
+numerous Illustrations. Gilt edges.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>A romance of the Franco-German War, showing how it affected an
+English family resident in Paris. Many of the scenes are drawn
+from the author's own recollections.</p></blockquote>
+
+<hr class="smler" />
+
+<p class="center">At 3/6</p>
+
+<p>A DIFFICULT DAUGHTER. By <span class="smcap">Evelyn Everett-Green</span>. Illustrated by
+<span class="smcap">Paul Hardy</span>. Gilt edges.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>The story of a madcap girl in wealthy circumstances, the pranks
+she played, the troubles she created, and the way in which her
+finer qualities gradually triumphed over the spirit of mischief.</p></blockquote>
+
+<hr class="smler" />
+
+<p class="center">At 2/</p>
+
+<p>MARY MORDAUNT. By <span class="smcap">Annie Gray</span>. Large, handsome volume, gilt
+top. Illustrated.</p>
+
+<p class="right">[<span class="smcap">The "Endeavour" Library.</span></p>
+
+<hr class="smler" />
+
+<p class="center">At 2/</p>
+
+<p>HETTY MARTIN'S TRIAL; or, Thorns and Roses. A Story of Home Life.
+By Mrs. <span class="smcap">Lysaght</span>. Illustrated by <span class="smcap">W. Dewar</span>. Gilt top. &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; [<span class="smcap">The
+"Endeavour" Library.</span></p>
+
+<blockquote><p>Showing how two girls and their mother left in poor circumstances
+through the death of the father, who was a farmer, bravely fight
+life's battle, and find a long-lost relative, who comes to their
+help and relief.</p></blockquote>
+
+<hr class="smler" />
+
+<p class="center">At 2/</p>
+
+<p>A GIRL GOVERNESS; or, Ella Dalton's Success. By <span class="smcap">A. E. Ward</span>.
+Illustrated by <span class="smcap">Everard Hopkins</span>. Second edition.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>A story of a young girl who, in controlling and influencing her
+pupil, a self-willed little lad, is led to look up from her old
+self-sufficiency to the true source of strength.</p></blockquote>
+
+<hr class="smler" />
+
+<p class="center">At 2/</p>
+
+<p>MARION HARLING'S AWAKENING. A Story of an Eldest Daughter. By
+<span class="smcap">Edith M. Edwards</span>. Illustrated by <span class="smcap">Scott Rankin</span>.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>Showing how a country minister's daughter lived fretfully in the
+monotony of a dull household, until she learned through bitter
+experience the need for self-subjection in the joy of living for
+others.</p></blockquote>
+
+<hr class="smler" />
+
+<p class="center">At 2/</p>
+
+<p>THE PILOT'S DAUGHTERS and FAITH HARROWBY. By <span class="smcap">Sarah Doudney</span>.</p>
+
+<hr class="smler" />
+
+<p class="center">At 1/</p>
+
+<p>CAUGHT IN THE TOILS. A Story of a Convent At School. By <span class="smcap">Emma Leslie</span>.
+ &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; [<span class="smcap">The "Wonderful Shilling" Series.</span></p>
+
+<blockquote><p>Relates the methods employed in a French Convent School to
+pervert two English Protestant girls who were sent there for education.</p></blockquote>
+
+<hr class="smler" />
+
+<p class="center">At 1/</p>
+
+<p>THE KING'S DIADEM. By <span class="smcap">Annie Gray</span>. &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; [<span class="smcap">The "Wonderful Shilling"
+Series.</span></p>
+
+<blockquote><p>Is a story for elder girls, and shows how the heroine gave up
+worldly pleasures to consecrate herself to the Master's work.</p></blockquote>
+
+<hr class="smler" />
+
+<p class="center">London: THE SUNDAY SCHOOL UNION, 57 and 59 Ludgate Hill, E. C.</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Making of William Edwards, by 
+Mrs. G. Linnaeus Banks
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+Project Gutenberg's The Making of William Edwards, by Mrs. G. Linnaeus Banks
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Making of William Edwards
+       or The Story of the Bridge of Beauty
+
+Author: Mrs. G. Linnaeus Banks
+
+Release Date: December 5, 2011 [EBook #38212]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MAKING OF WILLIAM EDWARDS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Chris Curnow, Lindy Walsh, Martin Pettit and
+the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE MAKING OF WILLIAM EDWARDS
+
+[Illustration:
+
+Yours Faithfully
+Isabella Banks]
+
+
+
+
+PUBLISHER'S NOTE TO POPULAR EDITION
+
+
+This book appeared originally as 'The Bridge of Beauty.' But on its
+re-issue in popular form it has been thought well to indicate in the new
+title the purport of the story.
+
+[Illustration: THE SEARCH FOR THE MISSING FARMER.
+
+_Frontispiece._] [_See page 16._]
+
+
+
+
+THE MAKING OF WILLIAM EDWARDS
+
+OR
+
+_THE STORY OF THE BRIDGE OF BEAUTY_
+
+
+BY
+MRS. G. LINNAEUS BANKS
+
+AUTHOR OF 'GOD'S PROVIDENCE HOUSE' 'THE MANCHESTER MAN'
+'IN HIS OWN HAND' ETC. ETC.
+
+
+_WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY W. DEWAR_
+
+
+SECOND EDITION
+
+
+LONDON:
+ANDREW MELROSE
+16 PILGRIM STREET, E.C.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+CHAP.                                   PAGE
+
+    I. A THUNDERSTORM                     13
+
+   II. WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN               25
+
+  III. A BOY'S WILL                       36
+
+   IV. PAYING THE RENT                    46
+
+    V. THE NEW INMATE                     57
+
+   VI. LOST                               70
+
+  VII. THE YOUNG PLAGUE                   83
+
+ VIII. THE DAY OF SMALL THINGS            95
+
+   IX. THE BAFFLED AGENT                 105
+
+    X. FRIENDS AND BROTHERS              118
+
+   XI. A MEMORABLE ENCOUNTER             129
+
+  XII. CAERPHILLY CASTLE                 141
+
+ XIII. MAN PROPOSES                      152
+
+  XIV. WHERE IS EVAN?                    162
+
+   XV. A STOP-GAP                        179
+
+  XVI. DISCOVERIES                       193
+
+ XVII. PROPER TOOLS                      207
+
+XVIII. IN THE GRIP OF A STRONG HAND      219
+
+  XIX. WITH GRANDFATHER'S GOLD           232
+
+   XX. IN THE NICK OF TIME               249
+
+  XXI. THE FINGER OF GOD                 264
+
+ XXII. A BLIND INSTRUCTOR                280
+
+XXIII. BRIDGE-BUILDING                   298
+
+ XXIV. PONT-Y-PRIDD                      313
+
+POSTSCRIPT                               333
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
+
+                                                           PAGE
+
+THE SEARCH FOR THE MISSING FARMER               _Frontispiece._
+
+THE RIDERLESS HORSE FOUND ITS WAY HOME                       17
+
+MOUNTED ON THE LOW WALL, ON HIS WAY TO EVAN'S SHOULDERS      67
+
+LYING IN THE MIDST OF THE HOARY CIRCLE OF GREY STONES        79
+
+'SO THAT IS HOW YOU PROPOSE TO CARRY ON YOUR FARM?'
+HE SAID, WITH A SNEER                                       107
+
+HE TURNED AND SHOOK HIS WHIP-HAND AT THE CHILD              111
+
+THERE WAS SOMETHING RATHER MYSTERIOUS ABOUT HER CARGO       165
+
+'YOUR RENT WILL BE ADVANCED TEN POUNDS PER ANNUM
+AFTER THIS DATE,' HE SAID                                   175
+
+HE FOUND MR. MORRIS SEATED AT THE TABLE AS WELL AS
+THE VICAR                                                   243
+
+LONG-LOST EVAN HAD COME BACK                                253
+
+BLINDED BY PASSION, HE SPURRED HIS HORSE TO THE
+UNCERTAIN FORD                                              269
+
+ELAINE PARRY                                                293
+
+ONLY HIS WIFE CAN ENTER INTO HIS FEELINGS, AND
+ALLEVIATE HIS BITTER HUMILIATION                            325
+
+THE BRIDGE OF BEAUTY, 1755                                  331
+
+
+[Illustration: CAERPHILLY CASTLE.]
+
+
+
+
+THE MAKING OF WILLIAM EDWARDS.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+A THUNDERSTORM.
+
+
+It was a sad day for Mrs. Edwards, of Eglwysilan,[1] when her well-loved
+husband, on his return from Llantrissant market one sultry Friday in the
+autumn of 1721, in attempting to cross the River Taff, failed to observe
+its rising waters, missed the ford, and was carried down the stream, a
+drowning man.
+
+Only that morning he had driven a goat and a score of sheep across in
+safety, the sheep following their agile and sure-footed leader, as he
+sprang from one to another of the out-cropping masses of rock, which,
+scattered in mid-stream, served alike as stepping-stones and as
+indications when the river was fordable, as it generally was in a dry
+summer.
+
+But the Taff, born in a marsh, and running through a deep vale, is given
+to rise as swiftly as the traditional Welshman's temper. Many are its
+seen and unseen feeders among the mountain steeps; and, although there
+had been but a light passing shower in sheltered hill-side Llantrissant
+that day, farther north a heavy thunderstorm had burst in a deluge over
+bogs and hills; and down from countless rills and rivulets the waters
+had come flashing in leaps and bounds, to swell the tribute brooks and
+rivers alike bore to the Taff as vassals to a sovereign.
+
+William Edwards was as steady a man as any farmer in Glamorganshire, but
+whenever a group of them got together, at fair or market, there great
+pitchers of _cwrw da_[2] were certain to be also, either to cement
+friendship or to clinch a bargain, and the beverage was uncommonly
+heady.
+
+Now bargaining was a long and thirsty process, and, although he was
+thrifty and the ale was dear, when Edwards had completed the sale of
+goat and sheep to his satisfaction, he had imbibed a fair share of the
+common beverage; not, however, so much as to prevent other huckstering
+and bargaining on account of his wife. The stockings knitted on the farm
+had to be sold, or bartered for needles, pins, tapes, or shoe-latchets;
+he had to purchase a sieve, a supply of soap and candles, a pair of
+Sunday shoes for his little girl, and a couple of tin cans.
+
+By the time these were thrust into his saddle-bags, the sieve and
+tinware secured to the pommel of his saddle so as to balance each other
+above the bags, and a final draught of _cwrw_ swallowed as a refresher
+for his journey, the afternoon had slipped nearly away, and with it one
+or two impatient neighbours on whom he had depended for company on the
+rough, circuitous road over the mountain ridge to the fords.
+
+Rough road indeed it was, little better than a beaten track worn by men
+and beasts constrained to pass that way; a road unsought except in dry
+weather, a rugged descent from Llantrissant to the ford of the Rhonda,
+and then up and down again, with stones and tree-roots lying in wait to
+trip unwary feet; for at that period the picturesque Vale of Taff was
+thickly wooded and scantily populated, and the roads were little better
+than deep gullies or natural stairways.
+
+His sturdy Welsh pony, however, was a thorough mountaineer, and, left to
+himself, jogged along without stumbling or straying, whatever the hour
+or the road. He took to the water and crossed the ford of the swollen
+Rhonda safely enough, although twilight was falling; but the evening
+shadows had deepened with every mile they trod, and grew heavier as they
+descended towards the larger river, with darkening woods on either hand,
+for there they rode through a veil of blinding mist.
+
+The mist had been gathering and the water rising rapidly, when Owen
+Griffith, one of his neighbours, who had prudently quitted the market
+three-quarters of an hour earlier than Edwards, finding the river
+evidently on the rise, had deemed it only wise to trust his pony's
+sagacity to find a trustworthy ford rather than depend on his own
+eyesight.
+
+It was quite a matter for after conjecture, but it was always supposed
+that the sagacious animal Edwards bestrode had grown restive and refused
+to take the unsafe crossing, and that he,--a man doggedly obstinate and
+wise in his own conceit,--unable to discern a reason for his faithful
+beast's rebellion, had forcibly compelled the reluctant animal to
+attempt the ford in spite of its resistance, as shown by hoof-marks
+beaten in upon the bank.
+
+Be that as it may, the riderless horse found its way home to the
+woodside farm on Eglwysilan Mountain, wet, foaming, and panting; the
+saddle and saddle-bags, drenched with discoloured water, telling all too
+surely that the uneasily watching wife was a widow, her four children
+fatherless. In such moments the mind always grasps at the worst
+suggestion.
+
+The distracted woman rushed shrieking to her nearest neighbour. Her
+awakened boys called after her, but she heard them not.
+
+The alarm spread. In an incredibly short space of time, considering how
+far apart lay the farms, and how few were the cottage homes, a score or
+two of half-dressed men and barefooted women were running or riding to
+the rescue, if such were possible. And wherever was practicable path or
+foothold, lanthorns were flashing along the steep and densely wooded
+banks upon the swiftly running river; but though it was seen where the
+poor horse had contrived to scramble up the bank, there was no sign of
+him they sought so anxiously.
+
+[Illustration: THE RIDERLESS HORSE FOUND ITS WAY HOME.--_See page 16._]
+
+The more fortunate beast had had a narrow escape.
+
+Not forty yards ahead the chafing Rhonda came leaping and foaming to the
+deathly embrace of the Taff, and in the swirl of the confluent waters
+all hope was lost.
+
+Yet still the despairing widow urged the wearied explorers on; and moved
+by her piteous entreaties, Owen Griffith, their near neighbour, declared
+he would not give up the search until the farmer was found, dead or
+alive, if he had to go as far as Cardiff to find him. The man was ill at
+ease, feeling as if a little more urgency on his part might have drawn
+Edwards away from the market in time for safety.
+
+His determination arrested the steps of several others who were on the
+point of turning back, and they joined him readily, but only on the
+condition that Mrs. Edwards should return home with the rest of the
+women, and leave the search to them. 'You will be best at home, look
+you! Women have no business here!' said they, unnerved by her white face
+and stifled sobbing.
+
+'Yes, yes, Jane,' urged the women. 'Think you of your children, do; and
+come back. It's crying in the dark, and all alone they will be, yes
+indeed!'
+
+And moved by the picture of her desolate children in their affright and
+grief, the sorrowing and agitated mother was drawn homewards, by the
+strong cords of maternal affection, to clasp them in her arms, and
+stifle her own anguish in attempts to impart the comfort she could not
+yet take to her own stricken heart.
+
+She was a religious woman, with a simple, unquestioning faith in the
+wisdom and love of her Heavenly Father; and who shall say the effort
+held for her no healing balm?
+
+If she wept, she also prayed; and although two of her children, William,
+not yet a three years boy, and Jonet, a girl of four, were too young to
+enter into the depths of her grief, or comprehend her prayers, David and
+Rhys,[3] respectively nine and twelve, were old enough to understand,
+and to feel how disastrous a calamity had fallen upon them unawares.
+
+Before midnight the three youngest had cried themselves to sleep. Only
+Rhys remained, with his arms around his mother's neck, to share her
+terrible night-watch, and wait for what day might bring; his overflowing
+young heart swelling with unexpressed resolves to be her shield and
+protector when he should grow a man.
+
+In the grey of the morning Owen Griffith and his helpers came upon what
+they sought a few miles below Treforest, on the eastern bank of the
+river, flung ashore like a weed by the inflowing current of the Rhonda,
+and left there by the rapid subsidence of the temporary spate. Soberly
+and reverently they laid it on an extemporised litter of boughs and
+reeds, covering the face with Owen's coat, and slowly re-trod the miles
+to lay the disfigured dead down on the bed from which a hearty man had
+risen the preceding morn.
+
+There is no antidote to inconsolable grief like active employment, work
+which exercises hand and brain and cannot be set aside. Such is the
+daily work on a farm; and though kindly neighbours had taken care of
+the poor horse and its burden, had dressed the younger children, and
+volunteered assistance in other small household matters, neither the
+cows nor the goats would submit to be milked by strange hands.
+
+Mrs. Edwards had, fortunately, no time to indulge in grief. She was a
+woman of determined energy and practical piety; and after the first
+overwhelming outburst of natural emotion, turned to her ordinary duties
+as if awakened to the consciousness that all the care and responsibility
+of farm and family rested on her individual shoulders.
+
+Dashing the tears from her eyes, she snatched up a milking-stool and
+pail, and was off up the hill-side, Rhys darting after her with a
+smaller stool and pail to milk the she-goats, not for the first time,
+but for the first time voluntarily. His initiatory lessons had been
+taken that summer, with his father standing over him to keep the
+refractory in order, whether biped or quadruped.
+
+He had not taken kindly to the task at the time, having all a boy's
+fondness for play, and would rather have gone bird-nesting than
+goat-milking. But _now_ that his father was gone--so suddenly taken from
+them--he, too, seemed to feel as if new duties devolved on him, and
+that, boy though he was, he must aim at the work of a man, and spare his
+widowed mother all he could.
+
+The idea was scarcely spontaneous. He had overheard a knot of gossips
+lamenting that Farmer Edwards had not left a son old enough to take his
+place on the farm, and help his mother to rear the younger ones as in
+duty bound. And he had straightway resolved to prove the gossips in the
+wrong.
+
+'If I am not old enough to take my father's place, I am old enough to do
+my duty, and I shall get older and stronger every year. They shall see
+what I can do to help mother; and as for my brothers and sister, am I
+not the eldest, and ten whole years older than William? Sure I can take
+care of them--at least I can try.'
+
+If this was not absolutely the boy's colloquy, it comes near enough to
+its spirit. There was something of the father's masterfulness in Rhys,
+and, directed to noble purposes, it might serve the widow in good stead.
+And noble purpose may be shown in small things as in great; indeed, is
+stronger in the lesser, where it makes no show, than in great deeds,
+which make a parade and attract applause. The only danger with Rhys was
+that, self-inflated, he might develop an obtrusively dominant will that
+should override his better qualities. At present his sole desire was to
+relieve his overburdened mother, and protect his sister and brothers--a
+worthy and noble aim for a boy of his age.
+
+But a boy reared on a small farm in those primitive days was not the
+helpless creature progress and modern manners have manufactured between
+them. Very primitive indeed was Welsh farming in the last century,
+primitive as the farms themselves. But no child of seven or eight was
+too young for work of some kind or other, whether reared in the
+labourer's windowless hut or on the farmer's own wide hearth. If only
+stone-picking, weeding, or rook-scaring, there was always something to
+be done, something to keep active and restless boys and girls out of
+mischief before they were old enough to drive the cows to pasture, or
+assist shepherd and husbandman.
+
+Of school-going there was little enough; even dame-schools were as
+scarce in wild Wales as in rural England; but there was generally a
+substitute by the fireside, and the man who could not read was far less
+common in the little Principality than in the larger kingdom.
+
+Still more scarce was the woman or man who could not knit. When a child
+was six years old, it was time to put knitting-pins into the little
+fingers to learn the simple stitch. And wander where you would, over the
+mountains or along the rough roads, you were sure to meet man or maid,
+on horseback or on foot, stocking-knitting with mechanical precision.
+
+In the long winter evenings, when the only illumination was from the
+culm fire, the solitary candle, or homemade rushlight, knitting and
+spinning filled up usefully the darkened hours. And perchance then the
+big Welsh Bible Dr. Parry had provided for his countrymen a century
+before would be brought out and laid on the table close to the solitary
+candle, to be read aloud or spelled out by the growing boy or girl,
+under paternal instruction. On the Sabbath this was surely so.
+
+Under such training it was clear that Rhys at twelve years of age would
+be more capable and practically helpful to his mother than a modern
+farmer's son, who sees the farm only in the holidays, or out of school
+hours, who handles tennis or cricket bat instead of spade and
+pitchfork, and never did a day's hard work in his young life.
+
+When Rhys bravely resolved to work like a man, he knew what lay before
+him to do and to learn. Farming on a thin, unproductive stratum of soil
+in a mountain land is no child's play.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] Pronounced Egloois-ilian.
+
+[2] _Cwrw da_, good ale. The _w_ has the sound of _oo_; thus _cooroo_.
+
+[3] Rhys, pronounced Rees.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN.
+
+
+Is there any record of a catastrophe so great or appalling that it could
+not possibly have been worse?
+
+In the first hours of her sudden bereavement, Mrs. Edwards felt as if an
+overwhelming flood of desolation had swept over her, and left her and
+her orphans helpless and hopeless. Not that her husband had been the
+most active spirit on the farm, but she was in no condition to reason or
+to weigh probabilities. She had not been wont to rely on him for advice
+or action, but in losing him she felt as if all was lost.
+
+An apparently small matter roused her to the consciousness that there
+were depths of misery into which she had not been plunged, and that even
+out of her affliction she had cause to thank God for sparing a double
+blow.
+
+When the drowned man had been discovered, he had been bruised and beaten
+against rocks and stones until his grey frieze coat was torn into shreds
+and tatters. But it was afterwards found that the old stocking-foot he
+carried as a money bag had been securely buttoned up in his breeches
+pocket, and the produce of his sales at the Friday's market was there
+intact in hard coin.
+
+In the extremity of her grief for her one great loss she had overlooked
+the probability of the smaller. Not till the saturated bag was handed to
+her unopened did she realise what might have been.
+
+As she poured the gold and silver out on her lap, she clasped her hands
+and fervently thanked God that in His wrath He had remembered mercy.
+
+'I had forgotten that the sheep and goat had been sold to make up the
+half-year's rent. Yes, indeed I had. And what would become of the farm
+and the poor children if the rent could not be paid? Pryse, the agent,
+would turn us out for a better tenant than a poor widow, look you! But
+he shall see what a woman can do. The good God has not quite forsaken
+us.'
+
+She wept again at the thought, and little William and Jonet having drawn
+close to her side questioning her with innocent eyes and tongues, she
+clasped them both in a close embrace, and, without trusting herself to
+answer, rose from her wooden stool and carried the recovered coin to a
+safe hiding-place in the big chest, her sad heart much lightened of its
+load.
+
+Barefooted David, who was still petticoated--his nine years bringing no
+title to the dignity of week-day shoes or breeches,--ran with all speed
+in search of Rhys, to carry the news that a bag of money had been found
+in his father's pocket, and that his mother was crying over it.
+
+Rhys was just then feeding the pigs in a stone trough, placed where
+they were walled in like sheep in a fold. He almost dropped the pail he
+was emptying, he turned round so sharply.
+
+'Crying? What for?'
+
+''Deed, I think it was about being turned out of the farm,' answered
+Davy, who had caught the words imperfectly, as he hurried out at the
+doorway.
+
+Rhys looked aghast. What became of his heroic resolution to work for his
+brothers and sister if they left the farm?
+
+'Turned out of the farm?' he echoed incredulously. Had not his father
+and grandfather been born upon it? It would be like tearing up an oak
+tree by the roots.
+
+''Deed, and she said it,' replied David, as if injured by the doubt.
+
+Down went the empty pail on the stones, and into the house strode Rhys,
+alternately red and white with excitement.
+
+He could scarcely get the words out, they seemed to choke him. 'Davy
+says,' he began with a gasp, 'that we are to leave the farm'--he could
+not bring himself to say 'be turned out.'
+
+'Nay, Rhys, not now I have all the money for the rent, thank God! If
+that had been lost in the river, I cannot tell what might have happened.
+There would be no chance of selling cows or pigs, or the oats, or
+anything before the rent-day, and Mr. Pryse would not wait an hour. "Out
+you go!" would be his word. "There's a man will give ten guineas more
+rent for it, and keep the land in better condition." Yes, look you, he
+has been saying that these three years, and now it's he will be for
+saying a woman will not be able to keep the hundred acres and pay my
+lord his forty pounds. It's poor land, so much rock and bog and wood,
+and he knows it, so much barren hill-side, scarcely fit to pasture the
+few sheep and goats. Yes, 'deed it will take hard work to make the farm
+pay now the husbandman is gone. Ah, yes, yes! We have had a terrible
+loss, Rhys, _fach_.'[4]
+
+As she spoke the last words the poor widow's tears gushed forth again,
+and would not be restrained. The flowers she was strewing over the
+sheet-covered form of her dead fell to the floor, and she dropped on her
+knees beside the bed, where it was her mournful duty to watch, and hid
+her face with her hands as if to conceal the passion of grief she could
+no longer control.
+
+Rhys was sobbing too, though he strove against it in his effort to be
+manly. His arm went round her heaving shoulders with an unstudied air of
+natural protection, and in a broken voice he begged her to be calm. Not
+that he was by any means calm himself, but he was feeling early the need
+for self-restraint.
+
+'Don't, mother, don't,' he murmured; 'you will be making yourself ill,
+and then who will mind the farm or the children? I will be a good steady
+boy, and will work as hard almost as a man. You shall not miss father
+more than I can help, look you. And sure we have a terrible loss; but,
+mother dear, it might be worse if we did lose the farm and all, as Davy
+did say. You are a good farmer, so Owen Griffith do say, and you will be
+teaching me.'
+
+'Yes, indeed, please God, and you shall be a good farmer too, Rhys,'
+sobbed she, drying her eyes on her long check apron, and giving him a
+look of profound trust and loving motherhood, whilst he drew himself up
+with a renewed sense of importance.
+
+At that moment a figure darkened the bedroom doorway. In stepped a
+fresh-looking young woman with bare legs and feet, short petticoats of
+striped flannel, a dark blue woollen cloak, and a man's tall hat worn
+over a plain linen cap, white as a snowdrop, though the stray locks
+beneath it might have been more orderly had looking-glasses been more
+common. She had a bundle on her left arm, a stocking she was knitting in
+her hand, whilst little Willie held her fast by the other, and Jonet
+clung to her cloak.
+
+'Ah, Ales,[5] is that you?' burst from Mrs. Edwards with an evident gasp
+of relief. 'You was not expected back so soon. Had you heard of our
+loss? Is your poor mother well again?'
+
+'Not quite well, but better, look you. She can sit up, and Mary may
+manage to do for her now, perhaps.' There was a dubious tone in the
+'perhaps,' but she went on to say, 'Mother would not let me stay when
+she heard of your great trouble, after you was so kind as to let me go
+away to nurse her. It was not right I should stay at Caerphilly when you
+was being left all alone by yourself, with nobody to keep watch with
+you or to help at all;' and she passed into the kitchen as she spoke.
+
+'Yes, _I'm_ here, Ales,' thrust in Rhys, as he followed. 'I shall help
+mother now; yes, indeed!'
+
+'You?' ejaculated Ales incredulously, whilst divesting herself of
+bundle, cloak, etc. 'Help's a little word and soon said, but it's not
+much more than the saying we will be getting from you, Rhys. You never
+was fond of work, whatever!'
+
+Rhys pulled himself up as if insulted. 'You shall see,' he said loftily,
+and quitted the kitchen, where Mrs. Griffith was paring turnips for
+dinner, his chin in the air. And not another word did he vouchsafe to
+the young woman, his mother's hired servant. He might, by his manner,
+have expected her to understand his altered position and good resolution
+intuitively, but she only knew him as a lad with more liking for play
+than work, and expected no more from the present than from the past.
+Nay, perhaps less, now there was no father to drive him to his daily
+tasks and thrash him into industry.
+
+It was a time of unusually painful bustle and excitement, yet there was
+no cheeriness about the daily tasks. Indoors there was a hush even in
+the scrubbing of benches, tables, and platters, almost in the dash of
+the churn, for was not the widow still keeping her watch by the
+dead--the dead who could not be buried on the third day, but must wait
+until coroner and jury could be called together to verify the cause of
+Mrs. Edwards' widowhood? Mrs. Griffith was there, alternately to help
+Ales with her work, and to relieve the mourner--a kind, motherly sort of
+woman, one to rely on in emergency.
+
+Out of doors Rhys kept David well employed, telling him he would have to
+learn to be a man, directing him to do this or that with quite an
+elder-brotherly air of proprietorship, though not unkindly. Ales
+wondered what had come to him, he worked about the farm with so much
+more knowledge of the right thing to be done at the right time than she
+had given him credit for possessing.
+
+As for poor little Jonet and William, they shrank whispering into
+corners out of everybody's way, or slunk out into the bit of ground that
+did duty for a garden, or strayed into the orchard, where they made
+themselves useful picking up windfall apples for the pony and the pigs,
+and did their best to make themselves ill by eating the unripe fruit at
+the same time; for although four years old Jonet was imitative in
+assuming a protectorate over her two years brother, she had not herself
+outlived a childish love for the crude and indigestible. They were,
+fortunately, too young to comprehend the mystery of the closed room, yet
+the general air of restraint affected even them, as they went about hand
+in hand.
+
+The valley of the Taff has long been noted for its fertility. It was
+otherwise in the early years of the last century, when husbandry in
+Wales was so primitive that the spade did duty for the plough, and crops
+had to be wrung from exhausted soil wholly by hand-labour; ignorance,
+and old prejudice in favour of doing as their fathers had done before
+them, standing in the way of progress, equally with the paucity of good
+roads and bridges over which to convey produce.
+
+In places the lowlands near the river were fertile; and where the stream
+was bordered by lofty slopes, and not hemmed in by precipitous limestone
+crags, they were clothed with dense woods of fir and mountain ash, oak
+and beech, with sallows by the water edge, all more esteemed by the
+sparse population for their timber than for their wondrously picturesque
+beauty. But at the top of the mountain range eastward of the vale, and
+on their upper slopes, much of the ground was sour and boggy, and called
+for more agricultural knowledge and appliances than had found their way
+thither, even when this century was born.
+
+The farm of the Edwardses was so situated on the mountain-side, and
+certainly enjoyed a diversity of soil capable of development in capable
+hands. In Eglwysilan parish it was regarded as a fairly large farm, and
+the house was the envy of the neighbours, though my modern readers may
+think there was little to envy. It had not only three rooms besides the
+capacious kitchen, but that kitchen could boast two glazed windows, one
+on either side the entrance; a very rare distinction, except in good
+houses or towns, so rare that not even shutters closed the apertures
+through which air and light found their way to the two sleeping rooms or
+to the long apartment in the rear, which served a variety of purposes.
+These were the housing of general stores, household and farming
+implements, a passage being kept clear from the kitchen midway through
+to the back door and farmyard. And this was all the isolation considered
+necessary for the dairy and dairy utensils, notwithstanding the purpose
+to which the other half of its space was devoted.
+
+All these separate rooms were upon the ground floor. Stairs were almost
+unknown conveniences in the cots and farms of wild Wales. Even in the
+villages few were the inhabitants privileged to look down upon poorer
+neighbours from upper windows. Lime, however, was plentiful in
+Glamorganshire, and though walls were put together of roughly hewn
+stone, they were whitewashed both inside and out with conscientious
+frequency.
+
+In no place short of a mansion was much furniture to be found. And to
+say that Mrs. Edwards had a well-scrubbed dresser filled with wooden
+platters and with mugs of Staffordshire pottery; that she had not only a
+large oaken table, but a linen cloth to cover it on occasion, and that
+there was a chair near the chimney corner in addition to the high-backed
+bench, or settle, and the three-legged stools; that a spinning-wheel
+stood between the two bedroom doors opposite to the fireplace, and that
+a large oaken chest stood under one window containing the family stock
+of clothing, and of flannel the wheel had helped to spin, was to say
+that she was for her time and place a thrifty, well-to-do woman,
+somewhat in advance of her class.
+
+However, the great feature of the kitchen was the expansive open
+fireplace, where the fire was made on a broad hearthstone, slightly
+raised, the inside of the chimney, which sloped upwards towards the top
+like a narrowing funnel, being set with stone seats for the elders of
+the family.
+
+On the Tuesday following the catastrophe which had made Mrs. Edwards a
+widow--although all the morning there had been the trampling through of
+coroner and jurymen--a fierce fire of peat and fire-balls filled the
+whole of the hearth, and two huge iron pots like witches' cauldrons hung
+suspended by chains above it, bubbling and steaming. At the same time,
+in the large oven built into the wall on the right of the fireplace, she
+and her helpers had been baking spiced cake and oaten bread the whole of
+the morning, as if providing for a regiment of soldiers.
+
+It was a hot day and hot work, though casements and doors stood open to
+let out the vaporous fumes of cookery; and had not neighbourly Mrs.
+Griffith come with her young daughter Cate to the assistance of Ales and
+her troubled mistress, the former would have been unable to relieve Rhys
+of his voluntary but fatiguing duty at the remorseless churn, so great,
+if not unusual, were the preparations for the guests expected on the
+morrow.
+
+Indeed, as Mrs. Edwards said, she did not know what she could possibly
+have done without Owen Griffith and his wife, they had been such zealous
+friends to her in her great affliction.
+
+She was not aware how the man's tender conscience stung him for leaving
+Edwards to return home alone from Llantrissant. He was feeling himself
+in some sort responsible for her bereavement. At any rate, no brother
+could have served her in better stead had a brother been at hand.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[4] _Fach_, equivalent to the English dear.
+
+[5] Ales, pronounced Alis; in English, Alice.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+A BOY'S WILL.
+
+
+As my story concerns not the dead man, but the family he left behind, I
+might pass over his burial in silence, had it not been marked by
+peculiar customs, few traces of which remain. Mountainous and
+inaccessible regions retain their characteristic traits of life and
+language long after intercourse has fused together the differing speech
+and habits of dwellers on the plains, whether city or suburban.
+
+It was the last watch-night, and neither Ales nor her mistress had been
+in bed for a couple of nights, the girl electing to share the widow's
+watch beside the closed coffin of her good master, as Rhys would still
+have done had his careful mother not forbidden.
+
+But long before the grey mists of morning had risen above the tree-tops,
+or lifted off the mountain-side, Rhys was up and astir with them. There
+was no leisure for indulgence in grief. There was so much to be done and
+cleared away before the mournful business of the day began. There were
+flowers to gather to strew upon the coffin-lid, and carry to the grave.
+And, if the sheep and cattle out on the hill-side could find pasture for
+themselves, the cows and ewes must be milked, the pigs and poultry fed,
+or released to feed themselves.
+
+So Rhys and Ales were off betimes, laden with empty pails; bare-legged
+Ales brushing the dew from the gorse and heather as she trudged along
+with a pitcher balanced on her head, a stool tucked under one arm, a
+pail on the other, her knitting, for a wonder, left behind; Rhys, by her
+side, swinging a large milking-pail to balance a second stool.
+
+When they returned with laden pails to be emptied into the tall churn,
+the fire was aglow, the porridge ready, the younger children up and
+dressed in sombre suits, Davy in his first breeches, and all three stiff
+and uncomfortable in shoes and stockings, neighbourly Mrs. Griffith and
+her young daughter Cate having come upon the scene to set the afflicted
+and harassed widow free for the rest of the day.
+
+Owen Griffith was also there, and by the time breakfast was over and a
+clearance effected, Mrs. Edwards and Rhys had changed their garments and
+assumed the sable hooded-cloaks prescribed for mourners. Then the table
+was covered with a clean homespun linen cloth, and re-set with cold
+beef, cake, and cheese, for all comers, along with mugs to hold the
+customary draught of hot ale and _abelion_, the latter a spiced
+decoction of elderberries and herbs, chiefly rosemary, huge pitchers of
+which were kept piping hot on the hearth.
+
+Meanwhile, Owen Griffith and a companion had improvised a table of
+planks, and a long bench in front of the house, piling up turf and
+stones as supports, a proceeding William watched with wondering
+interest. He may have puzzled where the mugs and platters came from, and
+who would sit at the long boards and consume all the beef, the piles of
+cake, and the great cheeses set out in halves, and what the two empty
+bowls were for in the middle of each table.
+
+At all events, Jonet wondered, and communicated her perplexity to David,
+who in turn referred to Rhys, to be answered curtly, 'Wait and see! I'm
+more puzzled to know what do bring Owen Griffith here, ordering about
+and as busy as if he was master.'
+
+The mother could have told that a distant cousinship between Griffith
+and the deceased sufficed for authority to make all needful arrangements
+in the absence of nearer kin, and that she was extremely grateful to him
+for his kindness all through the trying time.
+
+Very soon the other children had their questions answered, for guests,
+bidden or unsought, came trooping in from valley and mountain near and
+far, not by twos and threes only, but by dozens; relatives, friends, and
+mere acquaintances, for Edwards was a man held in high esteem. All were
+in their Sunday best, yet very few had so much as a bit of crape, a
+black kerchief, or a black pair of stockings. Their presence was
+supposed a sufficient token of respect.
+
+In succession as they came began, not merely a clatter of subdued voices
+discussing the sad accident--which might have overtaken any of them--but
+a general distribution and consumption of cheese, cake, and ale
+flavoured with the _abelion_, which custom may have rendered palatable,
+the simple provisions rapidly disappearing and being replaced as fresh
+arrivals brought fresh appetites, sharpened by journeying through the
+keen morning air, and eaten in primitive fashion, each man bringing his
+own pocket-knife, and converting his bread into a plate to be cut up and
+eaten with the meat upon it.
+
+And as the widow could not be reasonably expected to provide for so
+numerous and impromptu a party--_cwrw_ being rather an expensive
+item--each partaker cast a sixpence or other coin into the bowl
+provided, a proceeding at which the younger children expanded their
+astonished eyes--all was so strange to them.
+
+Then the crowd, both within and without the house, made way for the
+bearers with their heavy burden, and for the black-cloaked widow and her
+two eldest orphans to follow.
+
+On account of their tender years, the roughness and distance of the road
+to be traversed, it had been decided to leave Jonet and William behind,
+in care of Ales.
+
+But silent William had had his wondering eyes and ears open the whole of
+the morning; and no sooner did it dawn on his infantile comprehension
+that his father was being carried away in the big box, and that his
+mother and brothers were going away with it, than he insisted on going
+likewise; clung to his mother's skirts, and held fast, neither amenable
+to persuasion nor command to release her and remain at home with
+obedient Jonet.
+
+No! He saw his mother and brothers in tears, and the bearers slowly
+moving away with the coffin in which his father was shut up, and in his
+baby-ignorance he concluded some great wrong was being done. He had been
+told by Ales that he would never see his father any more, and must have
+concluded the others were being taken away also; for when he was carried
+into the house by main force, he fought and struggled in Owen Griffith's
+strong arms, and cried with dogged persistence, 'Me will go! me shall
+go!'
+
+Even when shut up close in the bedroom, he kicked at the door and
+screamed, 'Let me out, let me out; I will go!' until, after a while, the
+noise ended in a sob and a scuffle, and busy Ales concluded he had
+wearied himself out and fallen asleep.
+
+When Ales, some quarter of an hour later, opened the door in compliance
+with Jonet's piteous entreaties, the room was deserted, and William
+nowhere to be found.
+
+Kicking at the hard door had hurt his toes, in spite of his new shoes,
+so he turned round to try his heels. On so doing he discovered that the
+small window-hole was wide open. In another minute he was across the
+room, scrambling up on to a box lying beneath the narrow aperture in the
+thick wall, a look of sudden triumph on his determined round face.
+
+He thrust out his head and beheld a long procession winding in and out
+of the rocky and uneven road, a multitude of high-crowned hats, some
+atop of women's linen caps, these rising above a medley of red and grey
+cloaks, striped petticoats and dark jackets crossed with small shawls,
+mingling with men's grey coats and blue ones; but it did not occur to
+the child, as it might strike us, that there was any incongruity in
+these vari-coloured garments on so solemn an occasion. All to him was
+new. He had never seen such a concourse of people before; his sole idea
+was that his mother and his brothers were being borne away after his
+father, and that he was bound to overtake and bring them back.
+
+The window was not much more than a yard from the ground outside, but it
+seemed far to so young a child. However, he managed to clamber up in
+some way, and to drop outside on his feet, and, after a sly glance round
+to see that the coast was clear, he trotted off as fast as his sturdy
+little legs would carry him, and out at a narrow gap in the stone wall,
+which did duty for a gateway; and as the descending procession moved but
+slowly, and there were occasional stoppages for change of bearers, he
+contrived to keep the rear of it in sight.
+
+Ere long his wood-soled shoes and stockings chafed and cramped his feet,
+and he sat down on a wayside stone to remove them. When he looked up,
+the last hat had disappeared, but, nothing daunted, he set off again at
+a run, carrying his shoes and stockings in his hands, and ere long
+caught sight of the nodding hats at a turn of the tortuous road.
+
+He had run nearly a mile, and was getting breathless and footsore, but
+he went panting forward, with no thought of giving in; but soon he began
+to call out for some one to stop, and tears ran coursing down his chubby
+cheeks. Still he trotted on for another half mile or so; but the pace
+became slower, the tears ran faster, and when the tail of the procession
+again disappeared he sobbed aloud, beset with fears.
+
+At this juncture a man leaning over a wall, who had followed the long
+train with his eyes, caught sight of the woe-begone child, in its black
+frock, limping painfully along, and asked what he was doing there, and
+what he was crying for.
+
+The answer was not very coherent or articulate, but the man was sharp as
+he was good-natured. In a very short time he was out in the road, with
+William Edwards mounted on a sleek ass, following in the wake of the
+mourners, who after a short distance on the level began to ascend the
+lofty hill on the brow of which, like an eagle on its eyrie, stood
+Eglwysilan's[6] ancient church, with the modest vicarage beside it,
+isolated from the widely scattered parishioners, and almost inaccessible
+in foul or wintry weather.
+
+Local tradition assigned to this time-worn edifice a date coeval with
+the apostles. But suppose we allow the apostles to have slept for nearly
+three hundred years, and assign to our British St. Helena (or Elian),
+the church-founding mother of Constantine, the credit of selecting the
+breezy site for a structure to which she stands sponsor, we still
+accredit the long-bodied, square-towered, and small-windowed church with
+a most venerable antiquity, and solid masonry which might make modern
+architects blush for shame.
+
+No sooner were adventurous William's fears of being left behind set at
+rest by overtaking the slow pedestrians of the long train, than his
+spirits revived. He began to look about him, and to question the kind
+cottager, 'What's this?' or, 'What's that?'
+
+Of course he spoke in Welsh, as did all the people. I but render their
+language into English for my readers.
+
+From his elevated seat he could overlook low walls, and glancing down
+through the autumnal woods on his left, where the red ash-berries shone
+temptingly bright against the russet--leaved oak and yellowing beech,
+caught glimpses here and there of the shining river that had proved so
+treacherously cruel to his poor father. But neither red berries nor
+glancing river had such powerful attractions for him as the stupendous
+pile whence boomed the tolling bell--the 'church' of which he had heard
+so oft, but never seen.
+
+He had gone with his sister and brothers to the wooded glen which
+bounded their own farm on the north, there to help, or hinder, the
+gathering of ash-berries and acorns; but of human habitations he had
+seen nothing hitherto so large as his own home.
+
+He seemed absolutely fascinated by the grey lichen-covered church, and
+its low massive square tower, which he took for a huge chimney, and the
+nearer they drew to it the greater became his absorption.
+
+Being told, in answer to a query, 'People do go there to say prayers,'
+he asked again, 'Why for? We say prayers at home.' But though the man
+scratched his tangled red locks, no adequate reply was forthcoming.
+
+At that moment there was a halt at the arched lych-gate. All the men
+took off their hats, for the white-robed vicar had come to lead the way
+into the church.
+
+The boy, who had no hat to remove, could only look on and listen in
+blank astonishment, understanding nothing of the solemn ceremony, but
+awed by the mysterious proceedings, and the unfamiliar aspect of the, to
+him, vast interior.
+
+It was not until he beheld the coffin lowered into the 'big hole' that
+he screamed out, and was not to be pacified, though Owen Griffith stole
+gently away from the grave-side and took him in his arms for the second
+time that day.
+
+The ceremony was soon over, and nothing heard but the sobbing of the
+mourners and the dropping of small coin into the shovel the sexton held
+forth for their reception; for thus were the fees of the vicar and
+himself paid by general contribution, and not merely by the bereaved
+relatives. It was an old custom, seldom better observed than on this
+occasion; for of the motley multitude drawn thither to show their esteem
+for the dead and their sympathy with his family, two-thirds were wofully
+poor, had travelled far, and lost a day's earnings to be there; but few
+so poor as to pass the sexton's spade without a tributary coin, however
+small. Set it, therefore, to their credit, and also that all were
+decently clad, and flaunted no rags, if they had no crape to mourn in.
+Custom is its own law, and respect is not shown by the colour of a coat.
+
+But what of the little fellow who had found his way thither, and created
+so much consternation by his unseemly interruption?
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[6] Or, Eglwys-elian.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+PAYING THE RENT.
+
+
+''Deed to goodness! that boy's rightly named, for he's Will by name and
+will by nature!' said Ales when the child was brought home, showing no
+remorse for the trick he had played her, and little but indifference to
+the chiding of his mother or Rhys.
+
+'Me fought they was take you all away. Me said me would go. Me _did_
+go!' was all the excuse they could extract from him.
+
+He had made his return home triumphantly on the donkey of his stranger
+friend, a peat-cutter named Robert Jones, and was not at all disposed
+for humiliation. On the contrary, he was rather proud of his victory,
+and excited by his introduction to new scenes.
+
+The man, who was hospitably received and entertained, along with a
+numerous party of 'cousins,' for whose refection boiled beef and _cwrw
+da_ had been again set out, was quite ready to recount where and how he
+had picked up the child, and expressed his surprise at the resolute
+endurance that had carried him so far on a stony, unknown road, no less
+than the strong affection which had overpowered the little fellow's
+natural fears and sense of fatigue or pain.
+
+He repeated with much humour some of the boy's queer questions and
+sayings, promising to give him another donkey-ride some day. And
+finally, when taking his departure, Robert Jones patted the boy's brown
+head, and called him 'a little hero!' as the child ran past with Jonet.
+
+This was not very wise, for the tone of admiration was ill calculated to
+repress the child's early developed strength of will, or to soothe the
+ruffled feelings of Rhys on finding his own superlative good conduct
+apparently unappreciated, and William's wilful disobedience thus
+applauded.
+
+His chagrin did not escape the notice of the man, who, going round the
+country as he did, selling peat and culm,[7] had frequent opportunities
+for the study of human nature.
+
+'Yes, look you,' cried he from the doorway, as he saw a scornful curl on
+the lip of Rhys, 'your little brother will be greater than any of you
+some day--head of the house perhaps.'
+
+'He never will. I'm eldest, and then there's Davy. _He's_ a baby!' was
+Rhys' indignant protest.
+
+'A great good man, or a great bad one, Robert Jones?' called out Ales
+after the turf-cutter, an old acquaintance of hers. She had not forgiven
+William the fright he had caused by his escapade.
+
+'Indeed, sure, and that depends on what you make of him among you,' the
+peat-cutter called back over his shoulder, ere he bestrode his donkey
+and went off.
+
+'The man is right, Jane Edwards,' said Owen Griffith then to the widow;
+'there do be great capacities for good or evil in Willem; he will need a
+firm hand to control him.'
+
+'Ah, sure,' she sighed deeply, her grey eyes filling with tears, 'and
+now the firm hand is gone.'
+
+'Ah, 'deed for sure! more's the pity!' was echoed round the board.
+
+Rhys alone made no remark; but he set his lips close over his teeth, and
+tightened his grip on his knife-handle, looking as if he thought _his_
+hand firm enough to control his baby-brother, and as if _he_ meant to
+curb the wilful little one, whatever others might do. Ales saw it, if
+the mother did not.
+
+Meanwhile William, unaware of his eldest brother's paternal intentions,
+was seated under an apple-tree with Jonet, struggling for words to give
+expression to all the wonders he had seen and heard that day, the 'big
+house with the big chimney' more than all; whilst Davy, leaning
+listlessly against the tree trunk, as if fatigued with his long walk,
+crammed his mouth with bread and cheese, and smiled complacently at the
+youngster's first impressions of things familiarity had deprived of
+attraction for him, though over some he looked serious enough.
+
+Five miles away on the south-east from the mountain spur on which the
+Edwards' family had held a farm for more than a century, lay, in a
+broad plain among barren hills, the grand old ruins of Caerphilly
+Castle, the ancient stronghold of the Despencers, and the very small
+straggling market town it overshadowed, a town which had either gone to
+ruin or ceased to grow, since the great castle had been despoiled and
+tenantless.
+
+It had ceased to be a borough in King Henry VIII.'s time, but still it
+clung to its fair and market, and thither came farmers and their wives
+with their produce; miners or their wives, and the servants from the few
+great houses thereabouts, as buyers. And there, too, came, at stated
+periods, with his string of pack-horses, the travelling collector of the
+hand-made goods of the district, such as knitted hosiery, linen checks,
+woollen shawls, flannels, blankets, all spun and woven in farms and
+cottages scattered among the mountains. He was the medium between the
+English merchant and the poor producer, who in the days when there were
+neither canals nor railroads, nor any facilities for swift conveyance of
+goods or people, could otherwise have found no market for his wares. As
+it was, the weaver might probably have obtained better prices at
+Cardiff, but the miles of extra distance had to be calculated in the
+reckoning.
+
+Early on the Thursday morning Mrs. Edwards, with a grey duffle[8] cloak
+over her short black linsey[9] gown, and a black, low-crowned man's hat
+above her white linen cap, her healthy face pale and worn with the
+agitation of the week, stood by her egg and butter basket, debating
+whether she should go to the market alone, or yield to the entreaty of
+Rhys and take him along with her.
+
+It was likewise the rent-day. Mr. Pryse, the noble landowner's steward,
+condescendingly rode all the way from Cardiff to Caerphilly to meet his
+lord's tenantry at the little inn, 'The Cross Keys,' and woe betide the
+poor unfortunate who failed to put in an appearance, or to bring the
+full quota of coin.
+
+She was in no predicament of that kind, although she felt she might have
+been; but, hitherto, Edwards had always paid the rent himself, even if
+she had borne him company, and she rather shrank from her first
+encounter with the disagreeable agent.
+
+'You had better let me go, mother. Mr. Pryse will find that you are not
+quite alone, and may be more civil when he sees how big and strong I am,
+whatever,' urged Rhys.
+
+(Mr. Pryse was a little, wizened, cantankerous fellow, with a skin like
+shrivelled parchment.)
+
+Ales put in her word. ''Deed, mistress, you had best take the boy. A
+little stick is better than no stick in a fight.'
+
+Ales had settled the question with this last remark.
+
+'Well, perhaps it's best to be having a witness when you deal with queer
+folk,' assented her mistress; and Rhys had permission to scuffle off and
+slip on his black short-tailed jacket and breeches, so as to look his
+best and bravest. He was a sturdy, well-grown lad for his years, with a
+firm chin and fearless grey eyes, and whether it was fancy or reality
+his mother thought him taller in his new clothes.
+
+He certainly was developing rapidly; for no sooner was the shaggy pony
+jogging along with its double load, Mrs. Edwards in front with her
+basket resting on a bag of wool she had combed and spun, than he begun
+to expatiate on the necessity there was now for him to learn how to go
+to market, and buy and sell, if he was to be a real help to her. He
+'could not be learning too much or too soon,' he said, and was not
+contradicted, though a week earlier she would have laughed at him.
+
+The road wound in and out among the hills, where the abundant waxen
+blossoms of the cross-leaved heath were fast losing their delicate blush
+and fading with the season, and the rosettes of the sundew had forgotten
+their dead florets a month or more. The very bracken was turning brown
+and husky, and the roadway was strewed with yellow and russet leaves
+that were whirled hither and thither by the wind or were trodden into
+the earth by unrelenting hoofs.
+
+For it was also the first October fair, and there was no lack of company
+by the way. Owen Griffith, farmer and weaver, had joined them early with
+a great pack of flannel across his mare; and from almost every fold of
+the hills came one or more on foot or horseback to swell the general
+stream, every one, male or female, knitting along the road. The grimy
+collier and the swart digger of tin and iron hailed each other by the
+way, and the widow had many a respectful salutation as they jogged
+along, and answered many an inquiry about the boy behind her.
+
+Her first business when they reached Caerphilly was to get over her
+ordeal with Mr. Pryse, Griffith kindly taking charge of her horse and
+commodities.
+
+The narrow entrance to the inn was crowded with tenants on their way to
+the important deputy's room or from it, but all were ready with natural
+politeness to make way for William Edwards' widow. Mr. Pryse might have
+taken a lesson from men of lesser degree.
+
+From the table by the window where he sat, with an inkhorn and papers
+before him, small piles of coin at his right hand, he looked up.
+
+Rhys had taken off his hat; the steward, to assert his superiority, kept
+his upon his head.
+
+'So I hear you're a widow, Mrs. Edwards,' was his abrupt salutation.
+'The farmer could not see his way home, I'm told, and so got drowned.
+Blind drunk, I suppose?' A supercilious lift of his narrow shoulders
+emphasised his brutal comment.
+
+Rhys flamed up. 'No, sir; my father _never_ got drunk. He could not see
+for the mist, and the flood carried him away. If he had been drunk, sir,
+he could not have crossed the Rhonda ford.'
+
+If Mrs. Edwards had been shocked by the steward's unfeeling rudeness,
+now she feared her farm was in peril, and began to wish she had left
+Rhys outside.
+
+With half-shut eyes, Mr. Pryse scanned the impetuous boy from head to
+foot curiously. Ignoring the warm defence of a dead father, he drew his
+sinister brows together, and asked curtly--
+
+'That your son?'
+
+''Deed, yes, sir.'
+
+'How old is he?'
+
+'Twelve last March, sir.'
+
+An unpleasant smile thinned the thin lips that asked again--
+
+'Your eldest?'
+
+'Yes, sir.'
+
+'Humph! And do you expect to manage the farm with only _his_ help?'
+
+'Not altogether, sir. I've'--
+
+'What?' he interrupted. 'Come to give it up?'
+
+'_No_,' said the widow firmly. 'I have come to pay the rent. I can hire
+a man. But _I_ shall be the farmer, please God.'
+
+She counted out the money on the table as she spoke, the fire in her
+eyes burning up the tears.
+
+'And what sort of a farmer will _you_ make?' he replied with a sneer.
+'You'd better give up the holding at once.'
+
+'You'd better wait and see, sir. When I cannot pay the rent I may give
+in, not before. I am wanting the receipt, look you.'
+
+'Humph! Oh, ah, the receipt, sure!'
+
+Had he counted on her being so ignorant, or simple, or careless as to
+pay rent and take no receipt, his quill pen went squeaking over the
+paper so reluctantly? At all events he watched her narrowly through his
+slits of eyes as she took it up and read it carefully over, before she
+folded it up and stowed it away in her needle-book for safe carriage in
+her capacious pocket.
+
+He was not quite so confident of her incapacity for management when she
+left with a brief 'Good-morning,' and was followed by her son, who put
+on his hat and said never a word. He was wise, for if he had said
+anything there would have been unpleasantness.
+
+So there would have been had he heard the growl that followed them.
+'Humph! the young cub's as hot and unmannerly as his pig-headed lout of
+a father! but he'll get his nails cut when the widow marries again,
+indeed will he.'
+
+'Mother, does Mr. Pryse ever cheat any one? I don't think he wanted you
+to have that receipt you had to be asking for,' whispered Rhys when they
+got outside. 'I felt as if I'd like to knock him down, 'deed I did.'
+
+'Hush, Rhys,' and the widow looked round, afraid of listeners; 'you must
+not say that. He's a very hard man, and nobody does be liking him much,
+but I never heard of his really cheating any one. You must be very
+careful not to offend him. Your poor father did it once, and he has owed
+us a grudge ever since.'
+
+'Then he is a bad man, and I shall hate him for the wicked words he said
+of father.'
+
+Owen Griffith was waiting, and brief was the widow's opportunity to
+impress on Rhys the sin and danger of fostering hatred. As brief was the
+influence on him. Mr. Pryse, apart from the insult to his father's
+memory, had touched the sensitive nerve of his own sprouting
+self-sufficiency, and shown, so the boy thought, a tendency to overreach
+his mother; and, without any analysis of his own motives, Rhys had
+conceived on the spot an unconquerable aversion to the unprepossessing
+steward.
+
+When Owen Griffith's turn came, Mr. Pryse was, for him, unusually bland
+and gracious, much interested in his small holding and the welfare of
+his family, and _incidentally_ interested in his near neighbours, the
+family so suddenly deprived of its head. But though he passed the
+weaving farmer through a very fine sieve, he got nothing for his pains
+that could be laid up against either the drowned man or the capable
+widow.
+
+So capable, that she had disposed of her wool, her butter and eggs, sold
+a quantity of oats from a sample, hired a trustworthy young man named
+Evan Evans for the farm, made her own purchases, called to see the
+rheumatic mother of Ales, who lived in a small cot built within the very
+ruins of the castle, exchanged messages and Christian sympathy with the
+old dame, and was refreshed and ready for her return home with Rhys long
+before Owen or his friends thought of stirring.
+
+And home they got whilst there was light to pick their way, though
+clouds had been gathering in the south-west, and the first drops of a
+heavy downpour caught them as they neared the farm. They were welcomed
+by the joyous shouts of the little ones, and the assurance of Ales that
+they had all of them been 'as good as gold,' and well deserved the
+gingerbread brought home for them. Even William, of whom there had been
+some doubts, accepted the 'going to market' as a common occurrence, and
+had given her very little trouble, though he had exacted a promise that
+she would take him some day to see 'the great big house, with the big
+chimney, that they called the church.'
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[7] Culm, the dust of hard coal, used for fuel when mixed with clay and
+peat.
+
+[8] Duffle, made both in scarlet and grey, was a very thick,
+close-grained woollen cloth, its upper surface covered with pin-head
+curly knots. It was almost waterproof.
+
+[9] Linsey-woolsey, a mixture of linen and woollen, is still in use.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+THE NEW INMATE.
+
+
+The rain was still coming down with steady persistence when, two hours
+later, Evan Evans lifted the great wooden latch of Brookside Farm, and
+entered the large kitchen with a 'God save you' for greeting.
+
+Ales, who was giving the last stir to something bubbling in an iron pot
+on the fire, whence came a steaming savour of leeks, turned round
+sharply to see what sort of a young fellow had come into the house as an
+inmate, and seeing, returned his salutation, as did the two lads waiting
+for their supper.
+
+What she saw was a strong-limbed young man, about three or four and
+twenty, with a good-humoured smile upon his face, as if a drenched coat
+and muddy nether garments were quite minor discomforts. He carried a
+lighted lanthorn in one hand, and a bundle slung on a stick over his
+shoulder.
+
+'If you're Evan Evans,' said she, 'you'd best take off your coat, and
+sit down by the fire to get dry,' a corresponding smile on her face
+sufficing for a welcome, and indicating her content with the sample as
+presented.
+
+As if to ensure her good graces, his first act was to step across the
+floor, and with one strong brown hand lift from the chimney-hook the
+heavy broth-pot, on the handle of which the girl had just laid both of
+hers.
+
+'Good for you, Evan Evans; may you be always as ready,' said she,
+showing her firm white teeth, and hastening to ladle out the broth the
+boiled beef had supplied.
+
+'Always ready for a good supper,' was the prompt reply. 'One does not
+always get broth every day.'
+
+Meat was not often boiled for broth then on small farms. Indeed, was
+never cooked except on rare occasions.
+
+At that moment Mrs. Edwards came in from what we may call the 'dairy' in
+the rear.
+
+'I did not expect you to-night,' said she, 'but it is well you are
+here.'
+
+'Sure and indeed, ma'am, you would not have me come on a Friday, and I
+was not myself like to come on a Saturday, and I thought you would want
+me before the Monday, look you.'
+
+'Why not Saturday?' interrupted Rhys, waiting impatiently for his broth.
+
+'Sure and "Saturday's flitting is a short sitting" my Irish grandmother
+was used to say, and she was a wise woman,' answered the young man
+gravely.
+
+Superstition was so widespread and general, that no one uttered a word
+of doubt or dissent to either proposition, but Mrs. Edwards remarked,
+''Deed and it's quite as well you came. We have lost a week, and it's
+time some of the roots was out of the ground. It will be soft for the
+digging after the rain.'
+
+'Do you be having any potatoes among your crops?' he asked then over his
+steaming bowl of thick broth.
+
+''Deed, no; Edwards' (a sigh) 'said they was only for the gentry to grow
+in their gardens.'
+
+'Then I would have you try them next year. The head man at Castella says
+they was the most profitable crop he had on the land. They was good for
+the cows and the hogs if he had any to spare from the family table. He
+was be going to plough half an acre of ground for them.'
+
+'Plough? What's that?' questioned Rhys, to whom the very word was
+unknown.
+
+Evan explained to more than one attentive listener.
+
+'Ah, well,' said Mrs. Edwards, when he had done. 'Where I was in
+England, every farmer did plough his fields. And my own father used to
+be saying that the laws King Howel the Good did be making nearly eight
+hundred years ago, would not allow any man to be a farmer unless he
+could make his own plough, as well as guide it. But there did be only
+wooden ploughs in those days, and they did get knocked to bits on the
+stony ground among the mountains of wild Wales, and they did get out of
+use, whatever. I did want to have a good strong plough here, but Edwards
+was always be saying the spade was good enough for him. His father and
+his grandfather before him had dug every rood of the land with the
+spade, and what was good enough for them was good enough for him.'
+
+'Good enough's all very well where there's never a better,' thrust in
+go-ahead Ales, with the freedom of the time. 'You didn't be thinking
+your grandmother's distaff good enough for you when you bought that
+spinning-wheel.'
+
+Both Evan and Rhys looked up from their half-empty bowls across the
+table at Ales, as if struck by her pertinent shrewdness.
+
+'Indeed, Ales, I did not; nor did I think holes that let in the wind and
+weather along with the light good enough. But till the grandfather did
+die of rheumatics there could be no glass windows. And I did not think
+it good for the pigs to run loose, rooting up my garden and destroying
+what they could not eat, but there has never been a sty built to this
+day.'
+
+'And what's a sty?' asked Rhys.
+
+'A house for the hogs.'
+
+Rhys laughed. 'Why, mother, who ever did see pigs with a house of their
+own? All pigs run loose in the woods. Lewis did say to me he never saw
+any but ours shut up in a fold like sheep.'
+
+'Never mind Lewis. He has never gone far from Eglwysilan. If he had been
+in England as I was before I married, he would have been seeing
+pig-styes on every farm. But there be plenty in Wales, and Evan will set
+up one here very soon.'
+
+'Yes, indeed,' was the man's hearty response.
+
+There was some further talk over work to be done, and how it was to be
+done, before Evan followed Rhys to bed, neither having a word to say
+against overcrowding, although David was there before them.
+
+And then Mrs. Edwards and Ales, comparing notes, agreed that she had
+hired a very capable man.
+
+It might have been said with equal propriety that the widow had shown
+her own capability in the choice of a farm-servant who would live in
+close companionship with her fatherless sons.
+
+Over the board set forth with funeral meats she had named her want among
+the assembled relatives, and then had ensued a warm controversy on the
+merits of various men likely to be at the Caerphilly hirings.
+
+Some one had named Evan Evans. Thereupon arose a general outcry that he
+would ruin the farm with the notions he had picked up at Castella, where
+there was an English farm-bailiff. It was admitted that he was
+hard-working, honest, sober, and religious, but all these were as dust
+in the balance compared with the crime of departing from the old ways,
+and preferring new methods of husbandry.
+
+She had listened, making no comments. But she had hired the young fellow
+the more readily for those very detractions. She had not found the old
+ways pleasant or profitable. She meant to show Mr. Pryse what good
+farming could do for but indifferent land. And she counted on Evan's
+religious principles as warrants for the example he would set before her
+growing boys.
+
+The hiring was for the year, and could only be terminated by mutual
+agreement. At the same time it was renewable from year to year, and
+sometimes both men and maids remained with the same master or mistress
+half their lives. If any breach of contract occurred, the law was very
+strict and severe. A prison awaited the servant absent without leave, or
+wilfully refractory, and heavy fines the masters who ill-treated the
+servants so hired. Such cases were not frequent, but they did occur at
+intervals.
+
+Though the sky was clear, the rain was still dripping from the eaves,
+and had worn little runnels in the soil and between the grey stones on
+its way down hill to swell the noisy woodland brook, when Evan and the
+boys turned out of their close and darkened bedroom in the morning, and
+Rhys volunteered to show the former over the farm before the others were
+up.
+
+''Deed, no,' said the man, 'that do be your mother's place. She might
+not be liking us to make so free, whatever. We can make up the fire, and
+set on the porridge-pot for Ales, to lose no time. Where are the
+fire-balls kept?'
+
+This was a check to the boy's newly-born importance. Not choosing to
+wait upon the man, he ordered Davy to fetch the fire-balls, and marched
+out at the back in some dudgeon. Meanwhile, bidable Davy brought the
+fire-balls. Evan, all unconscious of the young master's wounded
+dignity, fanned the smouldering peat on the hearth to a glow, and had a
+clear fire under the black pot when Ales and her mistress came upon the
+scene, leaving Jonet and William still asleep.
+
+The morning ablutions of Evan and the two elder boys were performed in
+the open air, at a spring which gushed from the stony mountain-side into
+a natural water-worn basin; Mrs. Edwards and Ales in the nondescript
+apartment in the rear, there being little time or ceremony wasted in the
+operation.
+
+The rough-and-ready toilette completed, Ales went back to the kitchen;
+and the sun having just risen above the mountain-top to waken up bird
+and beast, and turn the lingering rain-drops into fairy gems, Mrs.
+Edwards herself led Evan over the primitive homestead, from the rude
+stabling and cowshed, where the fowls roosted overhead, to the
+dilapidated thing they called a barn, and the sodden farmyard, where a
+huge sow and her brood of piglings lay wallowing in the mire.
+
+Two years earlier the young man would have looked on all with
+complacency as the common state of things; but then he could only shake
+his head and coincide with his new mistress that there was room for
+improvements that would require time, energy, and some outlay. They had
+looked into the orchard, and at the stone fences, and, the survey over,
+came in at the front, where Mrs. Edwards had done her ineffectual best
+to copy an English garden for herbs and flowers, and to keep out pigs,
+poultry, and goats.
+
+By this time Ales and offended Rhys were back from milking, the two
+little ones were washed and dressed, and the porridge was ready for
+pouring out, quiet Davy having lent a hand wherever needed, without any
+fuss or assumption. He was always ready to fetch and carry at any one's
+bidding, and was seldom allowed to sit still. It was he who had brought
+water from the spring to wash the younger ones, and emptied it when
+used; he who had laid wooden bowls and spoons on the table and brought
+in the great brown pitcher of milk, and was lifting William to his seat
+at the table when his mother and Evan came in at the door. Just docile
+Davy, of whom nobody made much account either to praise or blame.
+
+Rhys, who had not yet recovered his composure, had already taken his
+seat at the table in silent displeasure, and took no note of their
+entrance, but both Jonet and William stared hard at the strange man, the
+former shyly, the latter with open-mouthed wonder, which he put into
+words.
+
+'Who's 'oo?' he wanted to know when Evan drew his stool to the table
+beside him.
+
+Being answered pleasantly, he rained childish questions thick and fast
+on the 'strange man,' all relative to his presence there, and was barely
+silenced when grace was said over the hot porridge. There had been so
+many strange men coming and going in the past week that he wondered if
+Evan had been left behind. His queries only ceased with a scalded mouth.
+
+'If you want to learn farming, Rhys, you had better come with Evan and
+me. We are going over the fields to settle what is best to be done,'
+said his mother when breakfast was over.
+
+Had his mother asked him to go along with _her_ to settle what had best
+to be done, and how, he would have risen with alacrity to share her
+cares and counsels, but much as he had professed his desire to learn he
+did not want Evan Evans for a teacher. Had not his interest and
+curiosity been excited overnight, he might have lingered behind, so sore
+was he from the morning's rebuff. As it was he rose but sullenly to
+obey.
+
+'May I come?' asked Davy.
+
+''Deed, no. You will be wanted here. Get your knitting and mind Jonet
+and Willem.'
+
+The peremptory reply served for both Davy and Jonet, though the latter
+did put a pouting finger to her lips. But William had ideas and a will
+of his own.
+
+'Me go with 'oo!' 'Me must go!' 'Me _will_ go!' 'Man, take me!' were his
+persistent iterations, while his sturdy bare legs and feet went
+pattering after his elders over the rain-washed stones, and he struggled
+with all his little might against the attempts of Rhys to force him
+back.
+
+Their wills were equally strong, but their strength was not. No doubt
+Rhys clutched the tender arms too tightly, for William screamed and
+cried out--
+
+''Oo hurt me; 'oo hurt me.'
+
+Evan, who had reached the gateway with Mrs. Edwards, turned back,
+saying pitifully, 'Don't be hurting the little man. If your mother do be
+willing to let him go, I will carry him on my shoulders, look you.'
+
+In another minute, triumphantly, masterful William was mounted on the
+low stone wall, on his way to the big man's shoulders, his mother
+smiling a passive consent, whilst Rhys bit his under lip and clenched
+his hands tightly in ill-concealed chagrin.
+
+It was the second time that morning Evan Evans, the hired man, had
+thwarted him, his father's first-born. Rhys, in his own opinion, had
+ceased to be a boy. He had quite decided that he was to be his mother's
+right-hand man, and that they would manage the farm between them, with
+underlings of course, and here was this great interloper come and
+thrusting him into the background.
+
+[Illustration: MOUNTED ON THE LOW WALL, ON HIS WAY TO EVAN'S
+SHOULDERS.--_See page 66._]
+
+It was with no good will he followed over grass land and arable, over
+the fallow and on to the high moorland, where the cows ruminated among
+the tall grasses, and the sheep nibbled close to the ground the sweet
+morsels the cows had left, and the omnivorous goats browsed on heather
+or anything else in the way of vegetation. He heard them talk of the
+carrots and other roots to be dug up and housed at once, of the lime and
+farm manure to be laid on this field or that, and the suitable crops to
+be raised; but though he had a crude perception that Evan was a better
+farmer than his father, he sullenly resented the change in
+contemplation. All the more, perhaps, because his mother called for his
+attention, with 'You hear this, Rhys?' 'Yes, Rhys; indeed, that will
+be best.'
+
+He gloomed, whilst William, released from his perch, ran hither and
+thither in high glee, chasing away the rooks and water-wagtails that
+were, unsuspectedly, doing the farmer good service.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+LOST.
+
+
+It is difficult in these days of chemistry, steam, and mechanical
+contrivances for reducing labour--if not for dispensing with it
+altogether--to realise the difficulties attending the farmer in wild
+mountainous districts, far removed from the centres of civilisation, and
+unacquainted with the agricultural implements and appliances even then
+in use in more favoured districts. Places where there were no carts and
+no proper roads, and where the ascents and descents were too abrupt for
+anything but a biped or a mule; where every acre of the cultivated
+mountain or moorland had to be turned over with the spade, and every
+particle of manure laid on the land had to be carried thither in baskets
+strapped on human shoulders, or in panniers borne by ass or mule.
+
+Yet, such were the difficulties Mrs. Edwards and other Welsh farmers had
+to contend with even up to the present century, the moorland farmers of
+Cumberland and the North-West Riding of Yorkshire being somewhat
+similarly situated.
+
+The loss of a whole week's labour at the beginning of October was a
+serious detriment. Even Rhys knew that, and finding that he was to take
+his instructions from his mother and not from Evan, he smothered his
+ill-humour and buckled to in earnest, though his brows contracted when a
+new form of labour was suggested to him.
+
+'Rhys, do you think you could cut down the bracken at the edge of the
+wood?' asked his mother dubiously.
+
+'Yes, surely, I can cut it. Did I not help to reap the oats? But why
+should it be cut?'
+
+'Evan says it will save straw in the farmyard, and should be stacked for
+bedding for the pigs and cattle before it do be too late. And after it
+has served the beasts, it will be better for some of the land than
+lime.'
+
+''Deed, an' Evan do seem mighty clever! Houses and bedding for pigs
+indeed!'
+
+'Yes, indeed, Rhys, and I am not too proud or too old to learn from him.
+Please God, he will be helping us to keep the farm in spite of Mr.
+Pryse.'
+
+Not another word of scorn fell from the boy's lips.
+
+Bidding Lewis, the shepherd's son, follow with Breint, the pony, to
+carry home the fern, as instructed by his mother, he, with a sickle over
+his arm, took his way across a grassy slope towards the steep woodland,
+stepping alongside the musical runnel the gushing hill-side spring sent,
+as overflow from a huge stone trough or basin, across the land and down
+the incline to join the tumbling brook from which the farm derived its
+name. The tawny brook itself had its source high up in the peaty moss on
+the mountain-top, and had worn, or found, a channel in a narrow cleft
+between precipitous rocks, whose seamy sides barely afforded foothold
+for fir and larch. Yet widening and deepening into a picturesque glen,
+the ash and the elder hung out their red or purple-black berries over
+the noisy and tumbling watercourse, and the sturdy trunks of oak and
+beech uprose and spread out leafy arms to shade it from the too
+intrusive westering sun, dropping in a ripe acorn or a triangular nut
+quietly now and then, to float away and fructify in a future season far
+from the parent tree.
+
+It was otherwise when the wild north-east winds came rushing and roaring
+down the glen, for then ripe or unripe acorns and prickly mast were torn
+rudely away along with shoals of russet leaves and flung to the ground
+as offerings to the hogs and omnivorous goats, the brook coming in for
+its share, as well as the fringe of feathery ferns.
+
+The larger portion of the farm lands were on the steep but undulating
+uplands above the white homestead, the more fertile, including the
+orchard and the garden-plot, lying below.
+
+Bordered on either side by rough stone fences, and separating the grass
+land from these, a wider well-trodden path or road, which the flaky
+character of the stony ground converted into a natural succession of
+broad shallow steps, trended obliquely from the house to the level or
+main road such as it was. Across this, some two hundred yards farther
+north, the simple brook spread itself out and chafed at the
+stepping-stones which barred its passage to deeper woods and the great
+river that would swallow it up. Just as some thoughtless youth rushes
+from the safe shelter of a home too narrow for his ambition, and
+plunging into the vortex of the untried world is lost for ever.
+
+Some thirty or forty paces beyond the shallow brook stood the low
+cottage of Owen Griffith, whitewashed like the larger farm above. Then
+the lane took a turn and was crossed by intersecting roads perplexing to
+strange travellers.
+
+The outskirts of a flourishing and busy town now cover much of the land
+I have described so carefully. Even the lanes and highways have
+undergone changes since the Edwardses held Brookside Farm and traversed
+them.
+
+On that sunny October forenoon, while Rhys and Lewis cut down fern on
+the borders of the wood, and Evan plied his spade to turn over the
+stubble in good furrows higher up the hill, Mrs. Edwards midway, like a
+true Welsh farmer's wife, resolutely dug up the long-rooted, tenacious
+carrots, sparing not her toil, whilst Davy (again in petticoats) and
+even four-year-old Jonet freed them from the loosened earth, and cast
+them into wicker baskets for Ales to carry from the field to the barn,
+poised on her head. The basket was not light when full, but she stepped
+along with ease and grace, knitting as she went or came, only tucking
+the rapidly increasing stocking in her girdling apron-string whilst she
+emptied her load, or changed an empty basket for a full one.
+
+At first, imitative William insisted on helping, or hindering, Davy and
+Jonet, and for a while was as busy as the rest. Then he began to trot
+beside Ales as she went to and fro. After a time the little bare legs
+grew weary, and when the toilers rested on upturned baskets, to take
+their noontide meal of oaten cake and buttermilk, he was almost too
+sleepy to eat or drink, and, resting his sunny head against his mother's
+knee, fell off into a doze.
+
+Seeing that, Ales promptly lifted him up in her strong arms, and,
+carrying him to the farm, laid him on his mother's bed and left him
+there, as she thought, secure from harm.
+
+Once or twice, after emptying her baskets in the barn, she came down to
+the house and found him sleeping peacefully. So an hour and a half must
+have slipped by, perhaps more, when turning in to look at her charge,
+she found the room vacant.
+
+Still, she was beset by no apprehensions of ill. She made up the
+smouldering fire, and did one or two little household matters before she
+went back to the field with her empty basket, nothing doubting but she
+would find the boy with his mother. He knew his way about the farm.
+
+'Is not Willem with you?' she cried out as she neared the group in the
+field. 'He is not in bed.'
+
+'Not in bed?' echoed his mother, but without alarm. ''Deed then, he will
+have gone to Evan or to Rhys. That will be it. He will have met Lewis
+with the pony, and got a ride in one of the empty panniers.'
+
+'Sure, and that's most like.'
+
+But on her next journey to the barn she saw Lewis bringing up the pony
+laden with the panniers of bracken, but no child. Hastily ridding
+herself of her load, she waited until he came near. Then she called
+out--
+
+'Have you seen Willem?'
+
+''Deed, no! Is he lost again?' came back in reply.
+
+'Lost? Name o' goodness, I hope not! Mistress will go distracted if he
+is. Empty your bracken, and keep a look-out; I'm off up the hill to
+Evan.'
+
+And away she sped at flying speed, straight as an arrow, over field and
+fallow. Her heart sank as she came in sight of Evan digging away as if
+his life depended on his day's labour, companioned only by feathered
+searchers for the worms he brought to light.
+
+'Evan!' she screamed, affrighted at last, 'have you seen Willem? We
+cannot find him anywhere, whatever.'
+
+Down went the man's spade, and over the freshly-turned ground he came
+bounding, in spite of his wooden-soled shoes. 'You don't mean to say the
+child is lost?' he cried.
+
+But she was already running back to her mistress, who took the alarm as
+soon as they came in sight, and clasping her hands in sudden terror,
+shrieked out, 'Oh, what is it? What has happened to my boy? Where is my
+darling Willem? Oh, if I lose him too, I shall go crazy!'
+
+Her only thought was that the child, in seeking Rhys, had fallen over a
+rock and been killed.
+
+Her shriek, her unbidden tears, communicated her fright to Jonet and
+Davy, who clung to her skirts and cried for companionship, Jonet hardly
+knew why.
+
+There was a general rush to meet Rhys.
+
+'Sure, he will be in the orchard,' said he confidently.
+
+But he was not in the orchard, not anywhere on the farm.
+
+''Deed, and I think he will be for going to the church,' put in Davy.
+'He wanted to be going yesterday, look you!'
+
+The idea was instantly caught up. Evan and Rhys were off in search, and
+Lewis after them. Ales in vain endeavoured to persuade the mother to
+remain behind, whilst she went up to the moor, to see if he had strayed
+thither after the sheep. 'Don't fret,' she said, 'they are certain to be
+bringing him back soon. His little legs would not carry him far.'
+
+'Oh, Ales,' expostulated her mistress, 'how can you ask me to sit still
+while my darling Willem may be dead or in danger?'
+
+'Mother,' said Davy, with a gulp to swallow a sob, 'I will stay and take
+care of Jonet if you both go. You will be good with me, won't you,
+Jonet?'
+
+'Yes, indeed,' replied the little girl, as his arm stole protectingly
+round her shoulders, and he kissed her tear-stained face, 'I will be
+very good.'
+
+So, with strong injunctions not to go away, the two children were left
+alone in the house, with only a grey cat and a rough dog to bear them
+company.
+
+At first they sat still and waited expectantly, clinging to each other.
+Then the silence and solitude became oppressive. Presently Jonet began
+to cry for her missing playfellow, and when brave-hearted Davy failed to
+console her, his own tears began to fall. A dreadful fear began to creep
+over him lest William should be lost like his father, and they might
+never see him again. How long the time did seem to those two children
+left alone with a new fear!
+
+Ales was the first to return. She found the two seated on the stone
+stile in front that commanded a view of the steep path, anxiously and
+with beating hearts watching for some one to come.
+
+She brought them no good news, and was off again with stool and pail,
+for the cows were lowing to be milked. But her very coming had broken up
+the dreary silence and monotony. And when she went she left them milk
+and cake, and the consciousness she was not far away. Then, at her
+suggestion, Davy began to teach Jonet to knit, and in the occupation
+time passed less painfully.
+
+Ales came back with her milk-pails, and commended them for being good;
+made up the fire and set on the pot for supper. And so long as the
+setting sun shone redly in through door and windows they were passive,
+and she bustled about her household affairs, hiding her own fears.
+
+But the sun set, and dusk came down, yet never a foot came near the farm
+to say the boy was found.
+
+Then Evan came up for lanthorns to renew the search. He said he had been
+to the very church gates, but could find no trace of the child. Owen
+Griffith had left his loom, and his wife had kept watch to give each
+returning seeker news of the others. Mrs. Edwards was then at the
+weaver's in pitiable distress, and Rhys rushing hither and thither
+almost as wild.
+
+The two children, unwilling to go to bed, had fallen asleep huddled
+together in the chimney corner, when, between nine and ten o'clock,
+restless Ales thought she heard a shout, and before she could get to the
+door in burst Rhys, crying out, 'He is found! he is found!' and close at
+his heels came Evan with the poor wanderer in his arms, limp and
+helpless, his hair and his clothes saturated with heavy dew or mist, his
+little bare feet cut and bleeding, his lips and hands stained with the
+juice of purple berries.
+
+The woods and every possible nook and corner seemed to have been
+explored, when Evan chanced to question a young man upon the Merthyr
+Road. The stupid fellow stared vacantly, then blundered out, ''Deed, an'
+sure I did hear something about an hour ago up by the Druid Stones, but
+I took it for a stray lamb bleating for the ewe.'
+
+'Well, sure, and it _might_ be a child crying. I didn't go to see,' he
+replied stupidly to a second question.
+
+[Illustration: LYING IN THE MIDST OF THE HOARY CIRCLE OF GREY
+STONES.--_See page 78._]
+
+Evan stopped to hear no more. Without seeking a regular path, he made
+his way through bush and bramble, over rock and hollow, and there in the
+very midst of the hoary circle of lichen-covered grey stones, which
+seemed to sentinel him round in upright double file, the light of the
+lanthorn revealed the child lying in a heap under the overhanging
+shadow of the great rocking-stone, his head pillowed on the arm that
+rested against its conical base. Had the child mistaken those grey
+stones for the upright slabs in the churchyard?
+
+The first rejoicing over, and the boy in bed, Rhys and Ales were both of
+opinion that he should be 'well whipped in the morning to teach him
+better than to put people in such frights.' And no doubt Evan was of the
+same mind, though he made no remark.
+
+But the tender-hearted mother could only thank God for his restoration,
+and say that he had punished himself quite sufficiently. He was not
+likely to stray again.
+
+Not for some time, for though all his garments were woollen, as were
+those of his elders, the damp, the exposure, no less than his childish
+terror, laid him up with a feverish illness that lasted for weeks.
+
+As well as could be made out from his disjointed confession, Davy's
+conjecture had been the true one.
+
+He had wakened, found himself alone, and had set off to 'see the big
+church,' nothing doubting he should find Robert Jones and his donkey to
+help him on his way. He had gone splashing through the shallow brook,
+and past Owen Griffith's unseen, but when he came to the bisecting roads
+his memory failed; he hesitated, turned to the right instead of the
+left, trudged on manfully northward, then took a by-path up-hill, as he
+fancied to the church, got bewildered among walls and winding ways, and
+out on the wild moor, stopping here and there to rest or gather
+blackberries, for he was growing both weary and hungry. But he never
+felt the solitude oppressive whilst there was a bird or a stray sheep
+about. And it was not until the dusk began to gather and he sank utterly
+exhausted under the great rocking-stone, that his courage forsook him,
+and he cried piteously in his hungry loneliness and desolation, cried
+himself into the insensibility of sleep, with only night and the
+everlasting arms around him.
+
+In losing himself had he lost his childish craving to see once more that
+wonder of wonders--the big church?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+THE YOUNG PLAGUE.
+
+
+Thankful as was Mrs. Edwards, the mother, for the restoration of her
+missing darling; as a farmer, sorely behind with the autumnal
+field-work, the loss of half a day's labour to every useful hand upon
+the farm chafed her no less than it irritated Rhys. But when the child
+was absolutely ill, and required careful nursing or watching, she was
+torn with a double anxiety. The life of her child was at stake, and so
+was her possession of the farm. There was so much to be done before
+November set in, and so few hands to accomplish all. The outdoor work
+could not be neglected, or the live stock and the crops would suffer.
+Yet _some one must_ remain indoors to watch the child, restless with
+fever. Davy was willing, but Davy was too young, and lacked strength to
+overcome resistance to nauseous draughts.
+
+She was at her wits' end; could not neglect her child, dared not neglect
+her farm.
+
+In this emergency, Rhys made a suggestion that Mrs. Griffith might
+perhaps be willing to spare her daughter Cate, a stout, red-haired,
+good-looking lass about his own age, who had already shown her active
+ability to make herself useful.
+
+After some slight hesitation on the part of the girl's mother, it was
+agreed that Cate should be at the farm early every morning, provided she
+returned home in the evenings before nightfall. Her temporary services
+were to be repaid with cheese made from the mixed milk of cows and ewes,
+or other farm produce, a customary mode of payment for casual service.
+
+Owen had suggested to his wife that the farm would be a good school for
+their girl. She would see things done there, both by Mrs. Edwards and
+Ales, that she had no chance of seeing at home, and she could have no
+better training for future service.
+
+The girl proved quite an acquisition. She was just as willing as Davy,
+and more efficient. When not wanted beside William, she was ready to
+relieve Ales at the churn or the scouring of pots and pails. Then she
+had a fairly good temper and persuasive ways that made her a capital
+nurse for a sick child with a resolute will.
+
+Jonet took to her amazingly. She brought some pieces of striped flannel,
+the refuse of her father's loom, and dressed up the little one's wooden
+doll like a real Welshwoman. And she brought green rushes from the
+brookside, and wove toy-baskets for her.
+
+Or, while Davy was away in the fields filling baskets with freshly-dug
+roots, or clearing the ground of stones (which many farmers in those
+days believed to _grow_, just as surely as weeds), and Jonet was ready
+to whimper for a playfellow, she would set down her knitting, or other
+work, to play at cat's cradle or push-pins; and, finding that Davy had
+tried to teach the little fingers to knit, she cast on stitches for a
+doll's belt, and, with a little patience on both sides, the feat was
+accomplished, and Jonet wonderfully proud of her new acquirement.
+
+By thus amusing the healthy child longing for a romp, she preserved
+quiet by the bedside of the sick one, whom an apothecary, brought all
+the way from Caerphilly, pronounced 'in a critical state.'
+
+Mrs. Edwards, anxiously coming and going, saw what a capital nurse she
+made, and judged she was of better use there than in the fields. Rhys,
+too, would put his head in through the open window now and then to ask
+how his brother was getting on, and satisfied himself that he had shown
+his discernment in suggesting Cate to his mother.
+
+And when William began to recover, which was not until November had well
+set in, no one was more willing to admit her obligations to the girl
+than was Jane Edwards. Nay, she went so far as to send Rhys to light
+Cate home when the shortening of the days caused her to be kept after
+dark, and Rhys never raised any objection.
+
+She had helped him on her first coming to strip the apple and pear trees
+of their late fruit, and to separate such as were to be saved for the
+market from those to be thrown into the mash-tub and crushed for cider.
+And on the first day that William was allowed to sit at an open door, he
+watched her and Rhys preparing the winter store of fire-balls, so
+willing was she to help in any way. Propped up in bed, he had seen
+Robert Jones once or twice lead a mule and an ass up the steep path with
+heavily-laden barrels slung across; but though he called faintly to the
+man through the open window, and was as usual inquisitive, he was little
+wiser when told they 'brought culm and clay for fire-balls.'
+
+Fire-balls were familiar things. Not so the culm or the clay, and to
+satisfy his persistent curiosity he was promised if he would keep quiet
+he should witness their conversion into the hard balls.
+
+A few yards from the house he saw on one side a great heap of black dust
+(the refuse of hard coal). This, barefooted Cate was riddling through a
+wire sieve (the very sieve Breint had brought safely home, though he
+lost the buyer), flinging away into a separate heap all that was too
+coarse to pass through the sieve. At a distance on the other side was
+laid a quantity of yellow clay, portions of which Rhys was moistening
+with water, beating and turning over with a spade, and when of the
+proper consistence adding, a spadeful at a time, the fine black dust
+Cate had sieved, to be again mixed and kneaded like dough, and finally
+worked with the hands into round hard balls, which he set aside to dry
+for fuel.
+
+The eagerness with which the pale little adventurer watched these grimy
+processes, his questions and quaint remarks, quite amused the two
+workers, but his searching interrogations speedily posed both of them;
+and when he wanted to know what _was_ coal, and what was clay, and why
+they mixed the two together to make them burn, he was greeted with fresh
+laughter, and an impatient, 'Oh, don't bother,' or its Welsh equivalent,
+from Rhys.
+
+But the little inquirer, who sat with his head on one side, resting it
+on his hand, was not contented with the put-off; and when Robert Jones
+came with a load of peat that afternoon, he was plied with the same
+questions.
+
+The man smiled. His own information did not go very far, but he did his
+best to reach infantile understanding; told him that the clay was a kind
+of earth dug from the river-side, and that coal grew underground, and
+was brought up in baskets out of a deep hole by a horse that was always
+walking round and round to wind them up to the top by a rope that wound
+round a thick wooden post.[10]
+
+This was a puzzler for William. He wanted to be taken there and then to
+see the horse go round and round.
+
+Ales, coming at that moment to pay the man, hoping to put a check on the
+child's new notion, exclaimed--
+
+'Name o' goodness, do you want the black man to carry you away down the
+dark pit-hole, where you would never see us any more whatever?'
+
+'Me don't fink they 'ood. They don't take man down,' replied the child
+sturdily; and at length the 'man,' ready to go about his business,
+promised to take him to see the horse go round 'some day.'
+
+''Oo said 'oo 'ood take me to see church, an' 'oo didn't,' then said
+William in high dudgeon, and lapsed into sullen silence. In all his long
+illness he had not forgotten the church he had seen but once.
+
+'Never mind, Willem _fach_; if you are a good boy, perhaps mother will
+let you ride with her to church on Breint next Sunday,' said Rhys in a
+consolatory tone.
+
+'Sure?' asked William, his face brightening.
+
+'Not _sure_, but I will ask her.' And with that the little fellow seemed
+satisfied.
+
+The three youngsters were in bed when Rhys made his suggestion over the
+frugal supper-table. It brought on a sharp controversy, in which Ales
+joined very freely.
+
+Mrs. Edwards was undecided. She 'feared the child would not be strong
+enough to sit through the service after the long ride.'
+
+''Deed, there's no fear o' that,' put in Ales; 'but it's Jonet's turn to
+go to church, before a babe that can't make head or tail of a word
+that's said; and more like take Davy than either. There's no good of
+humouring children.'
+
+'Well, I don't know what queer fancy he has got into that curious head
+of his,' argued Rhys; 'but I think it would be best to humour him this
+time, lest he should be setting off again, and'--
+
+'Humour him, indeed! More like be giving him a good whipping,'
+interrupted Ales. 'There's no end to his queer fancies. It's master
+over us all he will be soon, I'm thinking.'
+
+Evan had been silent. He agreed with Rhys. 'It is never too soon to
+learn the way to church,' said he. 'I will carry him there on my
+shoulders.'
+
+There was a sigh of relief from Mrs. Edwards. 'Ah, then,' she exclaimed,
+'Jonet and Davy can take turns on Breint. If it be fine,' she added. She
+was disinclined to be severe with William at any time, and after his
+long illness she felt unwilling to thwart him. Yet she had misgivings
+about indulging the obstinate self-will, 'so like his poor father's,'
+she told herself, with another sigh. Evan's proposal was hailed as a
+compromise that would, at least, content Rhys.
+
+Not altogether. He was not content that Evan should usurp his
+prerogative. _He_ was the one to carry his brother if he must be
+carried. He considered his own proposal the fittest; but, perhaps,
+ashamed of his foolish jealousy, and remembering the boy's weight, kept
+his opinion to himself.
+
+November though it was, Sunday happened to be fine. Whatever mist there
+might be on the mountain-tops, there was no thick smoke to blacken it,
+and down in the valley it was clearing off.
+
+William and Jonet were in high glee. The little girl had not yet been to
+church, and he had led her to expect something marvellous. After illness
+children pick up their strength more rapidly than adults. The week had
+done wonders for the boy, who had been trotting indoors and out for two
+or three days.
+
+He saw Jonet seated on a pillow in front of his mother on Breint, but
+was very much too much of a man to accept the proffered shoulders of
+Evan.
+
+'Me walk well as Davy and Rhys,' maintained he proudly, and trudged on
+sturdily so long as the road descended and had been clean washed by
+rain. But little legs cannot keep the pace with long ones, any more than
+can short purses with long ones, and after a time the weary little limbs
+were glad of a mount on the big broad shoulders. Yet even then he made
+the excuse of 'uncomfrable shoes an' 'tockings.'
+
+He did not talk much as they went, but cast his eyes from side to side,
+evidently taking note of wayside landmarks. Other people in their Sunday
+best were also on the road, and exchanged greetings in passing. He was
+apparently on the watch for Robert Jones, whose cottage of rough stone
+he recognised at a glance. He expected the 'man' and his donkey to be
+there also, and expressed his disappointment. But it was not until they
+passed under the shade of the dark firs that lined the roadside boundary
+of the vicar's glebe lands, when the lych-gate and the church, with its
+long body and massive square tower, were full in view, that he became
+demonstrative.
+
+Breint had been left at a small inn at the foot of the hill, and then
+William was pleased to dismount from his perch, and, with quite an air
+of patronising superiority, to take his sister by the hand as if to lead
+her up the hill, and over the stone stile to astonish her sight with all
+that had astonished him.
+
+The bells were swinging and ringing over their heads, as they had been
+ringing for nearly half an hour, but they were early, and whilst Mrs.
+Edwards and Rhys walked together to their new grave, William stood still
+with his eyes fixed on the great church tower with childish awe and
+admiration.
+
+Presently he startled Evan with the strange questions: 'How did it get
+there? Did it grow?'
+
+His pointed finger showed to what it referred.
+
+'Grow, child? No. It was built.'
+
+'What is built?'
+
+'Men brought stones, look you, and put them together.'
+
+'How?'
+
+''Deed, William, you do be asking queer questions. I will, maybe, show
+you how it was built next week.'
+
+'Will you? Could me build big church if me was big man?'
+
+''Deed, and perhaps you might help.'
+
+'Then me _will_.'
+
+At that moment, to Evan's relief, Mrs. Edwards caught her little boy by
+the hand to lead him inside, Davy having taken charge of Jonet.
+
+Church, clergyman, congregation, service--all were strange to the girl.
+Her head turned this way and that; now with a smile as she recognised
+some familiar face; but ere long she wearied, and, not being allowed to
+talk, she fell asleep, and slept, with her head against her mother's
+cloak, throughout the sermon.
+
+Not so William. The service was no more intelligible or interesting to
+him, but his unsatisfied, wide-awake eyes were everywhere exploring the
+sacred interior; his little mind lost in large wonder at the length of
+the building and the lofty roof overhead, so much larger to a child's
+imagination than its actuality. And how far his crude speculations went
+must remain a mystery to the end of time.
+
+The service over, Mrs. Edwards, holding Jonet by the hand, joined the
+stream of worshippers on their way to the porch, nothing doubting that
+she was followed by her boys. Once in the wide churchyard, dotted with
+upright slabs of stone, over which two magnificent yew-trees had stood
+sentinel for centuries, the congregation broke up into groups and family
+parties, to greet each other, and discuss alike the affairs of
+individuals, of the nation, and of the widespread parish--so widespread,
+indeed, that families whose ancestors lay all around lived too far apart
+for the meeting of kith and kin, except on the seventh day and on the
+common God's acre. Young people too--cousins and friends--clasped hands
+and blushed, or looked shyly at each other when only that was possible.
+The old vicar, too, when disrobed, would saunter from one group to
+another, shaking hands and inquiring about asthma, rheumatism, crops,
+and sweethearts, with genial impartiality. Here he would admonish one,
+there advise another; now his voice was low in condolence, anon cheery
+in congratulation; and, unless when there was some dispute over tithes,
+none ever turned towards him the cold shoulder.
+
+He greeted the widow thus: 'Ah, Mrs. Edwards, I observe you have brought
+your whole family with you to-day. That is as it should be. "Train up a
+child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart
+from it."'
+
+'Yes, sir,' she answered respectfully, 'I brought them all--Willem'--she
+looked round; 'Rhys, where is Willem?'
+
+'Ah, indeed, yes, where is the little fellow? I heard he had been very
+ill.'
+
+Another assent, another look round, the boy was nowhere within sight.
+But Evan was seen stalking towards the porch, and in a couple of minutes
+out he came leading the boy by the hand.
+
+He had found him standing in front of the communion-table, looking with
+awestruck eyes down the whole length of the church, but he suffered Evan
+to lead him away without demur.
+
+By that time, however, the vicar had gone, and Rhys, who had been round
+the church to look for the absentee, came back cross and ill-tempered.
+He had promised Cate to walk home along with her and her father, and had
+not been too well pleased to see them pass out over the stile beside the
+lych-gate, whilst he was still seeking what he could not find.
+
+'Where had you got to, you young plague?' he cried, with a frown on his
+face, taking the boy by the shoulders and shaking him angrily. 'You are
+always running off somewhere. But I'll thrash you if you do it again.'
+
+The mother interposed, but the harmony of the hour and the peace of the
+sacred place were alike disturbed, and Rhys marched off sullenly in
+advance, hardly caring whether he overtook the weaver and his daughter
+in his ill-humour.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[10] This was the old method of drawing coal and pitmen to the surface,
+until superseded by machinery. Wells and mills were similarly worked.
+And still horses are so employed to draw up yachts on the sea-shore, the
+rope passing round a block.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+THE DAY OF SMALL THINGS.
+
+
+Evan was one of those capable individuals, who, through making good use
+of eyes and ears, can turn their hands readily to anything. In those
+days, before the 'division of labour' had been formulated into a creed,
+the class was more common, and still in remote country places
+individuals of the type may be found. In addition to his field-work he
+had helped the shepherd to mend the stone fence of his sheepfold, and
+had made the ragged roof of the cattle-shed wind and weather proof with
+the heather Rhys had cut down. He had yet to demonstrate his 'all-round'
+faculty in the performance of a promise made, in the first place, to
+Mrs. Edwards, and secondly, to little William.
+
+It was quite a common thing in Wales, as it is in Ireland to this day,
+for the pigs to wander over the farm, or out in the roads, poking their
+snouts into the proprietor's kitchen as a matter of course, and making
+free with root-crops meant for human beings. But as it happened that
+Mrs. Edwards and Evan had experience of a better state of things, they
+were agreed as to its adoption.
+
+Consequently, at the beginning of the week, William, who had begun to
+follow Evan about like a small shadow, was delighted to watch him and
+Lewis clear away a large space among the outbuildings, and Robert Jones
+came two or three times with loads of rough stones from a local quarry,
+which his two patient beasts drew on the singular sleds or sledges that
+did duty for wheeled carts in those mountain regions.
+
+But it was the process of piling and fitting these loose and shapeless
+stones on one another, so as to bind together in a firm and compact wall
+without cement, that kept William dancing with excitement unfelt by
+either passive Davy or Jonet, to whom a stitch more or less in their
+knitting appeared of vastly more importance than the raising of a common
+wall. It might suit William to caper about, or to stagger under a
+voluntary load of stone, and fancy he was helping, it did not much
+interest them.
+
+Yet these children were no blinder than the world at large to 'the day
+of small things.'
+
+But when they noticed the rising walls shaping into two adjoining square
+enclosures with little doorways, across which he placed long, flat
+pieces of wood to support the upper courses of stone, and beheld a
+conical roof rise over each in genuine Welsh form, and learned that the
+two small houses were for the pigs to live in, Davy himself set up an
+exclamation of surprise, as Rhys had done before him. And, no doubt,
+Evan would have been equally surprised had he been told that the beehive
+form was as ancient as the habitations of those early British ancestors
+who fled to the Cambrian mountains for refuge from the Roman and Saxon
+invaders.
+
+Astonishment was exhausted when Williams, the Eglwysilan carpenter, on
+the Wednesday, brought a couple of stout wooden troughs and gates, for
+by that time each conical sty had been supplied with a small walled
+forecourt of its own, and Evan had covered the earthen floors with a
+thick carpet of dry fern for the pigs to lie upon. And whilst the man
+was at work fixing up the gates, he made a broom of ling, and began
+scrubbing the dirty old sow vigorously, to make her fit for her clean
+abode. The pigs grunted and the children laughed. So did Williams, the
+carpenter, to whom pig-scrubbing was a novelty. And so did Rhys, who
+came up the yard at the time, his lip curling with fine scorn.
+
+But Ales, who had lived with her mistress long enough to imbibe her
+advanced notions of cleanliness, and had, besides, a natural vein of
+good sense in her composition, called out from the unshuttered dairy
+window, where she stood drawing a knife through and through the
+newly-churned butter to remove accidental cow-hairs before making up:
+'Them as likes good bacon should be caring for the swine. There's fools
+as would rather be sticking in the mud than mending the roads.'
+
+Having delivered this oracular rebuke to the scorners, she resumed her
+butter-making with renewed energy, none the less for the swift glance
+and smile of approval she had seen on Evan's quickly upturned face.
+
+She and Evan were becoming as good friends as he and William, and he did
+not affect to despise an additional friend on the hearth where Rhys was
+silently hostile. Beyond the bounds of the farm he felt he could defend
+himself, if necessary.
+
+But it would be as easy to defend oneself from a fog as from the
+whisperings of envy or the shrugs and jeers of ignorance.
+
+Already was the voice of prophecy upraised among the Sunday gossips that
+Evan Evans would bring ruin on Brookside Farm with his foolish new ways.
+
+The very carpenter who had taken the order for the woodwork of the new
+sties had tuned saw and plane to laughter, and hammered down his
+conviction that 'Mrs. Edwards would be finding out the folly too late.'
+And listening lag-behinds shook their shock-heads and fell back on the
+old Welsh proverb: 'Ah, a widow's goods will soon be gone.'
+
+When these whisperings reached the widow in the guise of advice from
+well-meaning cousins in all degrees of affinity, she put them down with
+a short, decisive answer: 'Look you, I do have my ways, you do be having
+yours. Keep your own spade for your own farm.'
+
+She wondered how the petty details of new management had reached so many
+ears, and gave Lewis a sharp hint not to gossip about what did not
+concern him. But she never suspected Rhys of dropping the word-seeds
+that rose up around them as ill weeds of speech and thought.
+
+She had seen Rhys kick over wantonly a miniature wall that William was
+attempting to 'build' across the threshold with Evan's refuse stone
+chippings, and she had rebuked him sharply when he flung out angrily the
+small collection the child had brought indoors to 'build' with--just
+such a heap as a modern boy's box of bricks--not taking his pretence of
+'a litter' as an excuse. She had gone so far as to insist on the
+restoration of the 'poor darling's playthings'; but just as she failed
+to hear him delegate to Davy the task of picking up the scattered
+treasures William was crying for, so she failed to suspect her eldest
+born of any ungenerous feeling towards Evan, or any unworthy comment on
+private affairs to strangers.
+
+So long as roads were passable, and skies at all propitious, Mrs.
+Edwards was certain to ride to Caerphilly market, companioned by Rhys,
+less for protection than for his instruction. When Aquarius was reckless
+with his water-pot, Evan alone bestrode Breint, and seldom failed to
+make a good market.
+
+Equally, when Sundays were fine, Mrs. Edwards went to church, and with
+her Rhys and one of the younger ones; Evan's shoulders being always at
+the service of William rather than disappoint the boy. Yet, when the
+broken weather kept the house-mother and children from Sunday service,
+Ales was prompt and ready to accompany Rhys and Evan, even when the
+morning mist became a drizzle or a blinding fog. Umbrellas were unknown,
+and, therefore, unmissed. Cased in her thick, dark-blue cloak, its large
+hood drawn over her low-crowned, black-felt man's hat, and the white
+linen cap under that, she seemed to heed the weather as little as her
+companions in their heavy coats, and generally came back, after her long
+barefooted walk, as rosy and bright as if the sun had been shining
+overhead, and the pathway of velvet sward.
+
+If Rhys started with them, he had a trick of deserting them, and joining
+Owen Griffith and Cate. But he was so far his own master, and, as they
+made no complaint, Mrs. Edwards had no suspicion of his defection, or of
+an intimacy so close as to have become confidential.
+
+And, although Owen had been one of the first to follow Mrs. Edwards'
+lead in the matter of whitewashing and window-glazing, and had been a
+very good friend and adviser to the widow in her hour of sorest need,
+and would have been the first to rise in her defence, neither his wife,
+nor Cate, nor it may be himself, was above the bird-like propensity to
+pick up stray crumbs of confidence, or to drop them for other
+well-meaning, bird-like chatterers to pick up. So it came about that
+little was done on the farm that was not discussed half over the parish.
+
+Yet, notwithstanding proverb or prophecy, the widow's goods were in no
+danger from unthrift.
+
+Whether rain or fair, whosoever went to church or stayed at home,--and
+as the winter advanced the roads became impassable,--no sooner was the
+kitchen cleared after the simple dinner, than the big Welsh Bible was
+laid reverently upon the table, and either Mrs. Edwards or Rhys read a
+chapter or two aloud, she venturing to expound the text to immature
+understandings.
+
+Theologians might have smiled, or shaken their wise heads over her
+expositions, but she was a clear-headed woman, and seldom dived below
+her depth.
+
+She never allowed anything to break into this Sunday custom. It was a
+family bond drawing them all closer together; even the youngest bringing
+their low wooden stools nearer, and listening with attention not common
+where books and other objects of interest are many.
+
+In the wet and snowy winter months, when outdoor labour was restricted
+and the days short, indoor work was at its busiest. Doors would be
+closed to keep out the cold winds, Evan would bring fresh squares of
+peat and fire-balls to keep the hearth aglow. He would take the place of
+Ales at the churn, or would hang up the big porridge-pot, or (if
+cheese-making was about, though there was little cheese made in the
+winter) the great whey-pot, with hearty goodwill to help her. Then a
+candle would be alight, and whilst the cat and dog lay basking in front
+of the fire, all, down to the youngest, would have some useful or
+profitable occupation.
+
+It was then Mrs. Edwards' spinning-wheel went round the swiftest, and
+sang its song of industry the loudest.
+
+In former days her husband had combed the wool, and was teaching Rhys
+how to fling the tufts of greasy and matted wool over the heated iron
+combs set in an upright staff, and to draw them out like the long locks
+of a woman's hair. She had always sorted her own fleeces. We are all
+familiar with the sign of 'The Golden Fleece.' Well, just so the fleece
+of a sheep hangs together after it is sheared away, but in every fleece
+are several different qualities of wool, and the sorting and separating
+those qualities calls for a discriminating touch. This continued to be
+her task, though Evan took the wool-combing in hand, Rhys having an
+occasional turn with the coarser sorts.
+
+Ales, in generous rivalry with her mistress, having no second
+spinning-wheel, took up her distaff, as did half the women in the
+Principality, and set her spindle dancing on the floor as she drew out
+her thread of wool or linen.
+
+Knitting was taken up by any one of them when not otherwise employed.
+
+Thus Rhys plied his knitting-pins with ease and certainty, and the long
+blue or black woollen stockings grew under his fingers, whilst he
+proudly exercised his dead father's function, and taught his sister and
+brothers to read.
+
+It was a tedious occupation; and he might not have taken it up from
+choice, or accepted the office willingly, but the monotonous drawl of
+the learners sounded an undertone to the musical hum of his mother's
+wheel, and set his heart aglow with the feeling that, however and
+wherever Evan had superseded him, in _that_ at least _he_ represented
+his dead father, and was, in his own opinion, the head of the house,
+having authority over the younger ones.
+
+It made him more patient with them than he otherwise might have been.
+And it kept under his reluctance to teach little William his letters,
+when the child, with a laudable desire to look big and do what Davy and
+Jonet did, insisted on an introduction to the painted characters on his
+sister's battledore.[11]
+
+'Me tree years old,' Willie had pleaded, when Rhys asserted that he was
+too young to learn, and when that did not serve, 'Me ask Evan, Evan
+teach me,' was quite sufficient. Rhys drew his dark brows together, but
+he put down his knitting and pointed to the letters without another word
+of objection.
+
+Having thus, as it were, compelled his brother to teach him as a favour,
+he stuck to his self-imposed task with unflagging determination, as if
+he had something to master that must be mastered. And, perhaps, not the
+less persistently because, with all a sharp child's acute perception, he
+saw he was having his own way in spite of Rhys. Having his own way also
+in being free to build walls and houses on the great chest under the
+window with his accumulating bits of stone.
+
+That is, until Ales came at an early hour and swept his building
+materials into a corner, and swept him and Jonet off to bed with equal
+promptitude, barely waiting whilst they said their simple prayers.
+
+Work (the knitting, spinning, and wool-combing) did not cease until the
+general supper-time, about eight o'clock; but conversation lightened it,
+the distance between mistress and servants being scarcely felt or
+perceptible, though one directed and the others obeyed.
+
+Sometimes Evan might have occasion to look after a sick beast, or Ales
+to prepare a warm mash, or the shepherd might come in to report the
+condition of his flock; but so, with little variation, went on the
+routine of the farm, until renewing spring brought fresh activities and
+outdoor occupations.
+
+Spring, too, brought wizened Mr. Pryse, the agent, intrusively prying
+round the farm, his half-shut eyes scanning homestead and tillage with
+eager craving to discover signs of the mismanagement over which rumour
+had been busy.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[11] An oblong board about ten inches long by eight wide, on which the
+alphabets and simple syllables were painted. It was furnished with a
+handle. In many cases the letters were printed and covered with a
+transparent slice of horn. It was then called a hornbook.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+THE BAFFLED AGENT.
+
+
+Mr. Pryse mounted his horse and trotted away from the farm, biting his
+long nails as he went in sheer vexation. His survey had not been as
+satisfactory to himself as he had anticipated. The land was in good
+cultivation, and every one was at work upon it. In one brown field lime
+lay in round, white heaps; compost, from the farmyard, showed in dark
+patches, ready for distribution on the grass land. In one field Evan was
+sowing oats; in another plot, where the spade had turned over the ground
+in well-defined furrows, Rhys was dibbling holes for planting, and Davy
+followed, dropping in something he carried in a small basket, which
+would have baffled the sharp optics of the observer, had he not come
+across Ales, besides a heap of seed potatoes, cutting them up into
+pieces where the eyes were beginning to shoot, and seen Davy bring his
+empty basket for a fresh supply.
+
+'Mrs. Edwards do be in the house, sir,' said the young woman, as a hint
+that his inquisitorial observation was unpleasant; and, after a sneer at
+what he called 'experimental farming,' the hint had been taken.
+
+He had already been on to the moorlands to inspect sheep and goats, and
+put the shepherd through the fine sieve, and had come back over
+newly-sown crops, or springing shoots of green ones, heedless where the
+hoofs of his horse might fall. Had he been lord of the land in full
+possession, he could scarcely have been more indifferent; had he been
+tenant, he might have been more careful. As he neared the homestead, and
+saw barn and outbuildings in good repair, where he had expected
+dilapidation, he pressed his thin lips close together, but when he came
+upon the newly-erected sties, the thin lips spread, and made an abortive
+attempt to curl.
+
+'So that is how you propose to carry on your farm, is it? Aping the
+gentry!' he said, with a sneer, addressing Mrs. Edwards as he
+dismounted, the sound of hoof-beats having brought her to the dairy
+door. 'Do you imagine it will pay _you_ to house your hogs? You will be
+for putting your goats into limbo next.'
+
+[Illustration: 'SO THAT IS HOW YOU PROPOSE TO CARRY ON YOUR FARM?' HE
+SAID, WITH A SNEER.--_See page 106._]
+
+''Deed, and I wish I could,' was her response. 'They do so much damage
+to the trees and thatch.'
+
+'Ugh! And pray where did _you_ see hogs so accommodated? Not in the Vale
+of Glamorgan, I know. We don't house pigs as snugly as our labourers.'
+
+'Sure, sir, it was in England, when I was in service there. And at
+Castella and Llantwit. But, perhaps, sir, you will be coming in and have
+a glass of cider and a bite of bread and cheese?'
+
+He looked snappish enough to take a bite at her--or her farm--as he
+answered: 'England, indeed! Surely Welsh ways are best for Welsh
+people. You will not find English ones prosper here.'
+
+Nevertheless, he followed her into the house, noticing as he went that
+the dairy had been enclosed and partitioned off close to the jamb of the
+outer door, and was shut in by its own door on the left, so as to
+preserve it from the dust of traffic across, and from the open storage
+on the right.
+
+'Is that another of your English ways?' he asked, as he passed on.
+
+'Yes, sir.'
+
+'Humph! And your wheel, and your glass windows, and your potatoes? You
+will not find many imitators, Mrs. Edwards.'
+
+''Deed, sir, and I don't be looking for imitators, whatever; unless,
+perhaps, my children and my servants may be for teaching theirs, as I do
+be teaching them.'
+
+She had spread a clean, homespun linen cloth on the table under the
+cheese and the jug of cider, even though she disliked the agent and
+suspected his errand. Private feeling must not interfere with
+hospitality.
+
+He, for his part, accepted her attentions as a right, making as free
+with the cheese and bread and cider as if they had been ordered at an
+inn, with the relishing consciousness they would not have to be paid
+for.
+
+'Perhaps,' said he, after a good draught of the cider, 'you learned to
+make _that_ in England too?' the old ugly smile on his thin lips.
+
+'Partly, sir. In Herefordshire.'
+
+Narrowed as were the slits between his eyelids, nothing escaped his
+roving eyes.
+
+'What's that?' he ejaculated, pointing with his riding whip, as he rose
+to depart, to a rudely-constructed tower William was raising on the oak
+chest with his stone chips. The boy had backed into a corner in front of
+his sister Jonet, as if he recognised a foe in the stranger. Shyness he
+had none.
+
+His mother explained. 'Willem's building a Tower of Babil.'
+
+'Humph! If he can do that, he might be set to something useful. There,'
+said Mr. Pryse, 'that will find him employment,' and, with a stroke of
+his whip, he swept down the boy's tower, a malicious chuckle shaking his
+skinny throat as he strode out of the kitchen to mount his horse.
+
+As he rode away he heard a boy's passionate scream behind him, and felt
+the sharp pelting of a couple of small stones between his shoulders. He
+turned round in his saddle, and shook his whip-hand at the child, who,
+with face aflame, cried after him--
+
+[Illustration: HE TURNED AND SHOOK HIS WHIP-HAND AT THE CHILD.--_See
+page 110._]
+
+'You bad man! bad man, you!'
+
+But he only chuckled, as if the incident amused him.
+
+His satisfaction was but temporary, and before he had well reached the
+level he began biting his nails with vexation, for he saw only signs of
+improved husbandry, nothing on which he could pounce as betokening ruin.
+
+After a few days came a more welcome visitor to the farm, in the guise
+of a travelling packman, with his string of mules, on his rounds to
+collect the stockings, flannels, blankets, and linseys, knitted and
+woven in the farms and cottages scattered among the mountains or grouped
+in villages. For these he was willing to pay in coin, but he preferred
+to exchange for the English goods with which his beasts were laden, not
+so much of ribbon and laces, gaily-coloured gown-pieces, or cheap
+trinkets, as of useful hardware, knives, forks, spoons, crockery, pots
+and pans, needles, pins, tapes, and buttons; such goods as were in
+general demand for household use. Very rarely did he display any more
+gorgeous drapery than a silken neckerchief, or a bright ribbon for a
+bow. The Welsh still clung to their national costume, and, with few
+exceptions, were clothed entirely in woollen of native growth and
+manufacture. Still he carried hats with him, and the flannels or duffle
+collected in one part he could dispose of elsewhere.
+
+The jingling bells on his leading mule proclaimed his arrival. There was
+a general rush to surround him and inspect his wares, the children
+crowding in with the rest, and the clack of tongues was indescribable.
+
+His periodical visits were the great events of the year. The first duty
+was that of hospitality. Oaten bread and cheese and milk were set before
+him, and the winter's pile of knitted stockings and mittens brought out
+whilst he refreshed. These, as the man knew of old, had to be examined,
+priced, and paid for before Mrs. Edwards would allow one of his packs or
+panniers to be unloaded. Then ensued the bargaining for bright-coloured
+mugs and bowls; there was no need of teacups and saucers, for no one
+drank tea. It was almost an unknown luxury there. Jonet and William
+were favoured with a mug apiece, adorned with waves of bright blue on a
+yellow ground. Rhys had a new hat. Davy plucked at his mother's skirts
+and reminded her that he was to be finally breeched when the packman
+came round, and he was not disappointed.
+
+Something was wanted and bought for house and everybody.
+
+Ales, who had smartened herself up of late, invested in a
+bright-coloured cotton kerchief or shawl to be worn crossed over her
+short jacket, and a stout comb to keep her tangled locks in order; the
+need for which she learned by surveying her own good looks in a
+red-framed looking-glass Evan had given to her--a glass not larger than
+his own right hand, but it was better as a mirror than the broken water
+under the spring, and might be taken as an earnest of his especial
+goodwill.
+
+The ensuing rent was paid duly; and, in spite of prophecies and
+forecasts, it was as duly paid in succeeding years.
+
+But Mr. Pryse grew no more civil; indeed, he seemed ever on the watch
+for some pretext to turn the widow and her children off the farm she had
+done so much to improve. He had never forgiven Edwards for saying of
+him, 'he was too grasping to be altogether honest,' and, when the farmer
+was drowned, rejoiced as only an evil-minded curmudgeon could do.
+
+It was no satisfaction to him, as years went by, to see one whitewashed
+cottage after another stand out like a pearl among emerald fields and
+foliage, and know whose house had been the model. Nor could he hear of
+Owen Griffith and others venturing on a potato crop without a sneer. And
+he positively snarled when he heard the prices the widow's piglings and
+bacon brought in the market. Not that he ascribed the prosperity of Mrs.
+Edwards to her own good management. No; he set that down to Evan Evans
+and his previous initiation on the Castella estate. He owed the
+farm-servant a grudge accordingly. He rejoiced when he heard that Rhys
+regarded Evans as an interloper, and never missed an opportunity, by
+subtle sneer or insinuation, to fan the supposed antagonism into an
+active flame.
+
+As years rolled on, and he saw the down of incipient manhood darken on
+the lip of Rhys, ever his mother's escort on rent-days, his innuendoes
+became broader and stronger. There was an air of self-sustained
+mastership about the sturdy young fellow that suggested ripe soil for
+his weeds.
+
+'Humph!' said he, when Rhys was about eighteen; 'I should have thought a
+stout chap like you might have saved your mother the cost of a _head
+man_.'
+
+At a later date: 'Well, young man, I never expected your father's son to
+submit to a servant's rule so long.'
+
+Had there been any _submission_ in the case, Rhys would have taken fire
+at once. No hints would have been needed to provoke rebellion that would
+have led to the ousting of Evan. But the latter had never presumed to
+_give orders_, and, of late, had deferred to Rhys as his 'young
+master.'
+
+Whatever suggestions he made in farming matters were made to Mrs.
+Edwards. Command rested with _her_.
+
+Then Rhys had conceived a mortal antipathy to the agent that first
+rent-paying day, and he suspected a sinister motive in every word that
+fell from the ill-natured, thin lips.
+
+And it had been made a condition, by the shrewd widow, that Rhys should
+bridle his tongue, and allow nothing said by Mr. Pryse to provoke hasty
+reply, or she must take Evan in his stead as witness. Yet it was hard
+sometimes for either to listen quietly to the agent's coarse and
+insulting speeches, of which his noble employer had no suspicion.
+
+Some of his sharpest bullets were fired from a double-barrelled gun.
+'Well, Mrs. Edwards, I hear you and Evan Evans are about to make a match
+of it at last. How soon is this fine young man of yours to have a
+step-father?'
+
+A frown darkened the brow of Rhys, and an indignant retort was on his
+tongue, but, before a second word was uttered, the frown changed to a
+significant smile at a look from his mother.
+
+It was an open secret at the farm that Ales and Evan were courting, and
+only waited until they had saved enough money to set up housekeeping and
+farming for themselves, as husband and wife.
+
+Had Mr. Pryse but known it, there _was_ an element of disquiet and
+rebellion at Brookside Farm, of which he might have taken advantage.
+
+But he never gave a second thought to the boy whose walls he had
+levelled so wantonly. He had not seen that same boy, his passion over,
+pick up every scattered bit of stone, and patiently raise his walls once
+more.
+
+He had no suspicion how the strong will and pertinacity of that three
+years child would come later into collision with the mastership of his
+eldest brother, or the important part these stone chips would play in
+William's life, or how they might affect the welfare of the whole
+county, or make an enduring name when his own was forgotten.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+FRIENDS AND BROTHERS.
+
+
+There was no necessity for Mr. Pryse to suggest 'employment' for little
+William. In the last century, and far into this, children were set to
+work and expected to earn their own living at a wofully early age, and
+that long before machinery came into use and drove them into factories
+to be the slaves of brutal overseers, who scored their six and eight
+year old backs with weals from whip or stick on the slightest
+provocation. William Hutton, the historian, tells how he, a small child
+of seven years, was apprenticed, in 1730, to an overseer of Lombe's silk
+mill, in Derby, how he had to wear high pattens to reach the machine,
+had to rise at five in the depth of winter and hurry to work, slipping
+down on the ice as he ran, and how he was beaten till his back was all
+festering sores. And this was no uncommon case. I, who write this, can
+remember when the little barefooted children went to the cotton
+factories and print works at five in the morning, and worked till seven
+or eight at night.
+
+The boys and girls of this generation have no conception how children
+were trained and treated a few generations back. Not the poor only. The
+children of even rich parents had to endure painful punishments both at
+school and at home, and were fed sparely on coarse food for their
+health's sake. The late noble Lord Shaftesbury related how he and a
+sister were well-nigh starved in their childhood through the negligence
+of parents and servants.
+
+History and biography teem with such instances. So that when I state
+that William Edwards and Jonet were sent into their mother's fields to
+weed, and pick up stones, and scare the birds away from newly-sown lands
+before the boy was six years old, I cast no reflection on his mother,
+who had no experience of a different state of things.
+
+Nay, for her time, she was enlightened, and being a woman with good
+natural feeling, she was careful they were not taxed beyond their
+strength, as she and her husband had been; but that children should
+spend their hours in play, when they were old enough to be of use, had
+never dawned on her imagination. She considered she was doing her duty
+by them in setting them early to work, especially as she was careful
+they should be taught to read also.
+
+Davy worked in field and farm, alongside Rhys, without a murmur of
+hardship. And when Jonet was first set to feed the chickens, or to look
+for the eggs of hens that laid away, to pull peas or beans, or to shell
+the latter for the pot (peas were boiled in the pod), imitative William,
+always at her heels, and wanting to show his own cleverness, set himself
+to do likewise.
+
+And so long as he set himself voluntarily to work to assist Jonet, he
+was busy as a bee, and proud of his doings. Or when his mother or Ales
+sent him hither or thither to fetch or carry, or directed him to perform
+small services, he was as willing and amenable to order as most boys of
+his age. But no sooner did Rhys take advantage of his precocious
+industry, and exercise an assumed right to command, and bid him do this
+or that, than William began to rebel.
+
+He was docile enough to his brother as a teacher. He was more eager to
+learn to read than Rhys was to instruct. Davy and Jonet took their
+spelling and reading lessons as compulsory tasks--Davy placidly, and
+Jonet with uneasy disfavour--but William with an absolute desire to
+_know_.
+
+He no sooner discovered that the Ten Commandments painted up in the
+church, and the inscriptions on the upright gravestones in the
+churchyard, were just made up of the alphabetical characters on his
+painted battledore, and that the big Bible his mother read aloud to them
+was all a mixture of the same letters, than a craving to penetrate the
+mystery of these combinations seized him. He felt he had achieved
+something when he made his first grand discovery on a headstone taller
+than himself; but when, at his request, Evan read out the inscription,
+his perplexity and curiosity increased.
+
+It was singular to see the little fellow--he was short for his
+age--Sunday by Sunday tracing letter or word, with tiny finger, on some
+grey old slab, while his seniors were gossiping all around.
+
+'I tell you what,' said Rhys to him one Sunday when so employed, 'you
+might have been born in a stone quarry. I'm sure you ought to live in
+one, you do be so fond of the dirty rubbish.'
+
+'What's a stone quarry?' put in William, with wide-open eyes.
+
+'Oh, bother! It's a place where stone grows,' was the impatient reply.
+
+'Grows like trees?' and the wondering eyes of the six years old querist
+opened still wider.
+
+'Oh, what a plague you do be! No, grows like coal;' and away strode Rhys
+to avoid further questioning--a common but very unsatisfactory way of
+dealing with an inquiring child.
+
+'I'll be asking Robert Jones, he will tell me,' said William to himself.
+'Rhys do be caring more for Cate Griffith than for me, whatever,' his
+aggrieved looks following his well-grown brother as he strode over the
+grassy mound to join the weaver's wife and daughter under the
+patriarchal yew-tree, with all the importance of incipient manhood.
+
+The following day William was missing from the farm, but as this was not
+uncommon, only slight uneasiness was felt until evening.
+
+The boy had long before struck up a strange friendship with the
+red-haired peat-cutter, who, in fulfilment of his early promise, had
+taken him on his ass when bound to a colliery across the river for culm,
+and there let him see the horse plodding round and round in a circle to
+wind up coal and grimy colliers from the dark, deep pit-shaft, and let
+down the empty tubs to be refilled. There the child had looked round in
+wonder at the great black heaps of coal, and at the half-naked children
+sent down the terrible dark hole, to work in the bowels of the mine, as
+Robert Jones explained to him.
+
+Later he had taken the little fellow to see how peat was cut with long,
+narrow, flat shovels, 'shaped like a marrow-spoon,' from the boggy top
+of Eglwysilan Mountain. And when his sled was loaded, he had placed the
+child before him on the end of the sled, and gone sliding down the steep
+mountain-side with him swiftly and securely, to the youngster's infinite
+delight. He was too young to dream of danger, and to the man, long
+practice had made the perilous descent safe and easy, swift as was the
+downward motion, and sharp as was the jerk at the bottom. And many a
+ride on the turf-cutter's sled did William have after that.
+
+The man had no children of his own, and, perhaps, that was the reason he
+took so kindly to the lad; answering his strange questions to the best
+of his untutored ability, and frequently giving him a mount on one of
+his patient beasts between tubs or panniers when going for loads, or
+carrying them for sale not too far away. To him the child could open all
+his wondering heart, fearing neither repulse nor ridicule, of which he
+had too much at home; and so their friendship grew.
+
+On that particular Monday morning, Robert Jones had started on a long
+round, and nothing remained for the young inquirer, who had sought him
+at his ordinary haunts, but to limp homeward in the afternoon, hungry,
+footsore, and disappointed.
+
+Cate Griffith, returning from the brook with a pitcher of water on her
+head and another in her hand, caught sight of him as he was passing her
+father's door.
+
+'Name o' goodness!' she cried, 'what brings you here this time o' day?
+Look you, father, here's little Willem Edwards!'
+
+The weaver, then changing his shuttle, looked out from his casement
+window, and in two minutes was at the door questioning the wanderer.
+
+Without any shyness or reservation the boy told where he had been, and
+for what; his brother's initiative remarks with the rest.
+
+Cate, now a rosy-cheeked, buxom lass on the borderland of womanhood,
+began to laugh outright, as she had often laughed before when Rhys
+amused her with some story of William's out-of-the-way questions.
+
+Her father checked her sternly. 'What do you be laughing at?'
+
+''Deed, he do be so queer. Rhys do say he be always at play with bits of
+stones. And now he asks if they do grow like trees. Oh, Willem, you are
+droll!'
+
+Again her laugh broke out. William, child though he was, crimsoned to
+the roots of his brown hair. He seemed to comprehend that Rhys had made
+a jest of him, and no one is more sensitive to ridicule than a child of
+tender years.
+
+'Carry your pitchers into the house, and stay there!' cried her father.
+Then turning to the boy, who hesitated whether to linger or walk on, he
+said kindly--
+
+'Never mind Cate, my little man, she talks foolishness. Come and sit on
+this bench beside me. I'll try to serve instead of Robert Jones.'
+
+William's face lit up. He climbed to a seat by the weaver's side,
+content to find he was no longer laughed at. And very intently he
+listened to Owen's simple explanation that the mountain was nearly all
+stone, and that a quarry was the place where strong men broke away the
+stone for building walls and houses, and that the mountains had been
+there ever since God created the world, so that he did not think stone
+grew. And if Owen's was not a learned geological definition, it was all
+the better adapted to juvenile comprehension. But, simple as it was, a
+shower of whys and hows were rained on the exponent during its course.
+
+Then William rose to depart, but something in his face, or in his
+lagging gait, or a casual word, caused the weaver to interrogate the
+boy. This elicited the admission that he had strayed away from home in
+the morning, and that no one knew, and, moreover, that he was very
+hungry.
+
+Owen looked grave. He called for Cate to bring some bread and a cup of
+milk, and began to read the boy a lesson on the inconsiderate wrong he
+had done, and the anxiety he would cause his mother.
+
+'You should never leave home without permission, Willem. Your poor
+mother will be fretting and crying for fear lest you have fallen over
+the rocks, or got into the river and been drowned, or lost your way on
+the mountain as you did four years ago, when Evan found you asleep under
+the Druids' rocking-stone. It is very cruel and wicked for a child to
+stray from home without leave.'
+
+William hung his head. 'I did not mean any harm,' he began; 'but,' in a
+changed tone, 'what's the Druids?'--
+
+'Oh, you're here, are you? A fine hunt you have given us all, you young
+plague,' came in an angry shout from Rhys, who had crossed the brook and
+was advancing at a run.
+
+William's question died away unanswered. He got down from his stone seat
+inclined to be penitent for his misbehaviour. Owen Griffith had shown
+him that he had done wrong. He might have gone home and told his mother
+he was sorry. But Rhys, who had been as much alarmed at his absence as
+the rest, now he was found, caught him by the shoulder and shook him
+roughly.
+
+'Look you, if you do be running off again, I shall give you a good
+thrashing.'
+
+''Deed you won't,' was thrown back at him defiantly by William, whose
+penitence was at an end.
+
+'Won't I? You'll see. Sure, I've half a mind to do it now.'
+
+'Nay, nay,' interposed Griffith. 'Willem is sorry. He did not know he
+was doing wrong.'
+
+'Then he will have to learn. It's quite time he made himself useful.
+Jonet did before she was his age. And so did I. We can have no idlers
+on our farm, whatever. Ah, Cate, is that you?' His voice had brought the
+girl to the open window. She leaned out, blushing like a peony. He
+joined her, and said something which made her giggle and provoked reply.
+Then ensued some whispering and laughter. Rhys apparently forgot all
+about William and his mother's anxiety whilst occupied so pleasantly,
+for there was no doubt Cate had more than a third-cousinly attraction
+for him, and chance opportunities for seeing her except on Sundays were
+not frequent.
+
+When his errand recurred to him, William had disappeared, and
+notwithstanding Rhys' longer legs, the fatigue of the small ones, the
+gathering dusk, and the steepness of the ascending path to the farm, the
+truant crossed the threshold first.
+
+At once uneasiness resolved itself into displeasure. He was scolded on
+all sides, and threatened with the loss of a supper if ever he ventured
+to give them such a fright again.
+
+'I wanted Robert Jones,' was all the excuse he made. The scolding was
+received with stolid silence, which was called sullenness.
+
+Yet he had not forgotten Owen's picture of his mother's distress, or his
+grave reproof for straying away, and had he been differently received,
+he might have been contrite and sued for pardon.
+
+It is a difficult matter, even in these analytic days, to search out the
+inner workings of the child-mind, or to understand all that influences
+wayward moods. How were those rudely-cultivated farmers to penetrate
+beneath the surface, to see the undeveloped oak in the immature acorn?
+
+'Robert Jones do be spoiling that boy,' said Mrs. Edwards, when the
+child was in bed. 'I wonder what he wanted with the man?'
+
+'Wanted? Sure, he wanted to ask if stones do grow like trees,' said
+Rhys, in a tone of impatient scorn. 'It was only last week he did be
+asking me if the trees made the wind, because it was always windy when
+the trees tossed about.'
+
+'Well, _don't_ they?' queried stolid Davy, amidst a roar of laughter, in
+which even the mother joined.
+
+'Now, don't you be as silly as Willem. I never before knew you ask such
+a foolish question,' said Rhys dogmatically.
+
+'No, Davy,' explained his mother, without stopping her busy wheel, 'it
+is the wind that blows the trees about,'--an answer which sufficed for
+him. He was not curious to learn what caused the winds, or whence they
+came, as William had been. He accepted facts as they were, untroubled by
+vain speculations.
+
+Undoubtedly William--the father's namesake, her youngest born--was the
+mother's darling, in spite of his odd ways. And however cross she might
+have been overnight, in the morning, when the others had dispersed, she
+took him to task for straying away without leave; not angrily, but
+sadly, showing him the trouble he was likely to cause, and the anxiety
+she had had, remembering the time when he was lost before.
+
+It was a very effectual supplement to Owen Griffith's lecture; the
+sensitive boy's feelings were touched. He threw his arms around her
+neck, begged forgiveness, and promised the best of behaviour for the
+future.
+
+Alas, for a child's promises! William went to work beside Jonet like a
+little man, helped in seed-time and harvest, and won commendations from
+Ales and Evan. But he had his dreamy hours; he continued to pile up
+stones in odd corners, and was alternately ridiculed and rebuked by
+Rhys, whose interference he resented.
+
+This went on for about two years, trying the patience of both, and then
+came a more serious outbreak.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+A MEMORABLE ENCOUNTER.
+
+
+William's rebellion had begun to show itself in sullen disregard of his
+brother's orders. He was always active and willing when his mother or
+Evan called him--Davy might convey a message, but never had an
+independent order to give--he was Jonet's obedient bondslave, but when
+Rhys demanded his services or attention he generally turned a deaf ear.
+For this, Rhys--who considered his ten years' seniority quite a warranty
+for control as his mother's deputy and his dead father's
+representative--took him to task imperiously, not with any desire to be
+knowingly overbearing, but from a stern sense of his own duty to a lazy
+lad.
+
+At length, one bright day in early spring, when William was little more
+than nine years of age, he stood lingering after the midday meal close
+beside the stone gate-posts of a field where Davy and Jonet were already
+busy weeding a freshly springing crop of corn. His arms rested upon the
+coping of the wall with his chin upon them, whilst he, looking down into
+the fertile vale below--where glimpses of the shining river were
+discernible like twinkling stars, through the tender green shoots which
+veiled the swaying boughs on its densely-wooded banks--seemed lost in a
+dreamy mist of speculative thought. The boy's reverie was rudely broken.
+
+'Now then, lazyback! What do you be doing there?' called out Rhys, who
+carried a spade on one shoulder and a wicker basket in his hand, which
+he tossed down at his brother's feet. No answer coming, he called out
+again, 'What do you be doing there?'
+
+'I do be thinking,' came composedly from William.
+
+'Thinking, indeed! I wish you would be thinking about your work. What
+can you have to think about, whatever?'
+
+''Deed, nobody knows my thinks,' replied the boy, without turning round.
+
+'You will very soon know _my thinks_,' retorted Rhys, 'if you do not
+pick up your basket, and get to your weeding. You are one of the "late
+and lazy who will never be rich." Come, stir you.' And, as if to enforce
+obedience, Rhys raised his disengaged hand and struck the other a sharp
+blow across the shoulders.
+
+At once William turned round, his cheeks and eyes aflame. Rhys thought
+he was about to strike him back again.
+
+Instead, he gave the empty basket a kick that sent it flying over the
+ridges, and was out at the narrow gateway in an instant, with a defiant
+air that seemed to dare Rhys to lay hands upon him again, or attempt to
+draw him back.
+
+That day he was seen no more upon the farm until nightfall, when he was
+sent to bed supperless as a punishment.
+
+He was up betimes in the morning, and had the fire alight before any one
+else was astir. He was having a wash at the spring when Ales came into
+the farmyard.
+
+'Name o' goodness!' exclaimed she, 'what's got you out of bed so soon?
+Want your breakfast, I suppose?'
+
+William nodded in assent, on his way to the common towel.
+
+'Do you think you be deserving any?'
+
+'Does Rhys be deserving any?'
+
+Ales had a proverb ready, 'Who does well, deserves well.'
+
+'Is it doing well to call names and be striking his brother?'
+
+Ales had no direct answer to that. 'Rhys says you are idle and should be
+made to work. You do be playing with stones when you should be weeding
+or knitting. _He_ does always be working hard,' she replied evasively.
+
+Prompt was the retort, 'A big man should work, I will do better work
+than Rhys when I am as big. 'Deed I will.'
+
+This conversation had taken place during the hasty ablutions of Ales,
+who had latterly grown uncommonly anxious to present 'a shining morning
+face' to Evan when he appeared. As she combed out her hair at the
+diminutive looking-glass he had bought her, as a hint, and which hung
+beside the storehouse door, she began in an insinuating tone--
+
+'And where did you be going yesterday, Willem? Did you be with Robert
+Jones?'
+
+'Never be you minding,' said the boy, walking past with a pitcher of
+water for the porridge. And no further information could she or any one
+else extract from him.
+
+After that, whenever Rhys and he came into collision he disappeared, and
+none could say whither he went or with whom. Cate or Owen Griffith might
+see him pass the cottage door, and exchange a 'good-day' greeting, but
+beyond that his wanderings were unknown.
+
+In a mountainous parish like Eglwysilan, where was no village community,
+where farms and cottages were mostly solitary and far apart, there was
+little chance of encountering many strollers out of the main highway,
+except on market-days.
+
+Wandering aimlessly in his blind passion, on the day when Rhys had
+struck him, hardly noting the way he went, he found himself all on a
+sudden on what appeared to be a short, grass-grown roadway, bordered on
+both sides by upright blocks of stone, more stunted and less shapely
+than the slabs in the churchyard, but planted there with so much method
+in their irregular intervals, they might indeed have been dwarf guards
+to some great giant turned suddenly to stone by the magic art of a still
+greater necromancer of the olden time, as he had heard.
+
+Such legends were common on the domestic hearth. So that, although it
+was a bright spring afternoon, an eerie feeling crept over the
+passionate boy, especially when he found himself within a wide circle of
+such stones, surrounding, in double file, a huge angular mass of like
+stone, narrowing downwards from a flat top, capped by a second stone,
+and delicately poised on the rounded point of a small conical base in a
+hollowed depression of the natural rock, and in some sort bearing out
+the simile of the petrified giant's throne.
+
+As William looked upon this unshapely mass, some dreamy recollection
+floated through his mind of having visited the spot before, when the
+stones had seemed alive, and making mouths at him. Without nearing the
+central stone, but keeping his eye upon it, he walked slowly round
+within the inner circle, and, as he went discovered a second path
+(leading north) corresponding with the one by which he had entered from
+the south.
+
+Then it dawned upon him this must indeed be the spot where he had lain
+down faint and tired, when he was, oh, such a little boy, and had been
+so frightened by the grim aspect of the stones, as the dark night had
+come on, and he could not rise to get away.
+
+Soon he ventured to touch the large central stone that had terrified him
+before by giving way on the pressure of his tiny hand. It swayed and
+rocked to and fro, and he drew back instinctively, but it did not fall.
+And now he knew it surely for the great rocking-stone, and no longer
+feared that it would fall and crush him so long as he was good and true,
+for so the legend ran.
+
+But now other doubts and fears oppressed him. These would be the very
+Druid-stones Owen Griffith had named, and Robert Jones had warned him
+not to seek, lest some great harm should come to him.
+
+Was it true there were once men called Druids, and did they come to life
+at midnight and nod to the moon, and to the big nodding-stones? Robert
+Jones and Ales both said they did, though they had never ventured there
+at midnight to see. They only looked like ill-shaped stones, too little
+for men. But had they not made faces at him when he was a bit of a baby
+crying there in the dark?
+
+The boy's heart sank. He was not proof against the grim and weird
+recollection. He took to his heels and ran out of the memory-haunted
+circle by the stone-guarded avenue next to him, nor stopped until he had
+left the desolate and barren spot far behind.
+
+But where was he? That was not the way towards home. He stood on a wild
+heath, high above the valley of the Taff, with the mountain rising and
+stretching far away on his right hand, with here and there labourers
+tilling the red-brown upland fields, and children at work beside them,
+as he should have been working 'but for Rhys,' he told himself.
+
+He did not know, and could not see it, but the Merthyr Tydvil road, such
+as it was, lay sunk between the heath and the receding mountain. He had
+only to gain that, and turn completely round, to find his way homeward.
+
+He looked to the wooded declivity on his left, where birds were calling
+to their mates under the swelling pinky buds or pale-green opening fans,
+and the odour of wood violets came sweetly fresh in every breath he
+drew. A rabbit rose and scuttered past him, and made for the underwood,
+where the golden crosiers of trooping ferns were uncurling in their
+beauty. The river ran far below, ran with an inviting rush. One moment,
+and the boy had plunged into the wood. 'He would _not_ hurry home to be
+struck by Rhys.'
+
+He could easily find his way back with the river to guide him.
+
+So, now slipping, now catching at the trunk of a tree to maintain a
+foothold, he scrambled nearer to the river's brink, where was no more
+perceptible path than what had been made by intruders like himself. Once
+there he fancied the water was more than commonly disturbed; it was here
+and there flecked with foam and swirled in eddies. 'Surely the river
+must be in flood,' he said to himself.
+
+A little way off a well-dressed young man was seated on a stone, fishing
+with rod and line.
+
+William had no shyness. 'Why does the water make such a noise to-day,
+and be so rough?' he asked.
+
+'Don't you know? It is from the falls. The river is always noisy here.
+It is louder higher up the stream.'
+
+'Oh,' said William; 'what are the falls?'
+
+'Indeed you had better go on a bit farther and see for yourself, my lad.
+But be careful how you go.'
+
+The spirit of adventure was on the boy. He thanked the man and did 'go
+on,' until he stood still with amazement, for there the full river came
+leaping down, in broken falls, from rock to intercepting rock, some
+fifteen feet in all; but they might have been fifty for what the
+home-kept boy knew.
+
+Strange is the fascination of living, leaping water. He stood there
+gazing spellbound, lost in admiration, listening to the tumultuous
+uproar, as the swift waters came rushing and flashing downwards,
+striking themselves against the rocks into angry foam that William
+mentally compared to suds when Ales was washing, only he never had seen
+washing on so large a scale. If there were finer cascades in the world
+he had not seen them. He was fascinated by what he did see, and lingered
+long.
+
+'I wonder if Rhys or Davy ever saw these falls?' he said to himself;
+'they never told _me_. They tell _me_ nothing. But I will find out
+things for myself.'
+
+The fisherman was rising from his stone when William again drew near. He
+had his rod and basket in hand prepared to go.
+
+'Well, what do you think of the falls?'
+
+'Oh, 'deed, and they was wonderful--and terrible. I was thinking how
+soon they would drown a man.'
+
+'Yes, or a boy either. Which way are you going?'
+
+'By the riverside, through the wood as far as the ford.'
+
+'That will not be safe at this hour. You might slip into the stream. You
+had best go back the way you came.'
+
+'I--I dare not,' stammered William.
+
+'Dare not? Yet you are not afraid to go through these pathless woods by
+the riverside at dusk, though a false step might be fatal. Come along
+with me; I'll see you on a safe road.'
+
+William followed through the ascending wood cautiously as before, ready
+to brave anything with such a companion.
+
+The sun had not set when they stood upon the heath above, and then the
+stranger inquired--
+
+'Well, my boy, of what are you afraid?'
+
+'Of going past the Druids' stones, sir.'
+
+'So you are superstitious? What harm can a few old stones do to a stout
+boy like you?' was asked with a broad smile.
+
+William felt half-ashamed of the confession, how he had been lost when
+quite little, and had seen the stones make faces at him, adding the
+current stories he had heard, and his fright that afternoon.
+
+By this time they were descending a slope from the barren heath to the
+Merthyr Tydvil highway, thus avoiding close proximity to the dreaded
+circle, although the roadway passed on a lower level. As they went, the
+stranger did his best to disabuse the boy's mind of his foolish terrors,
+and gave him to understand that long before there were any Christian
+churches in the land, or any Christian clergymen, the Druids were the
+priests, the priests of Baal, and set up those stones for their temples.
+Yet he said nothing of their horrid rites or human sacrifices, lest he
+should confirm the boy's dread of the stones.
+
+William listened with wide-open ears, putting in a question here and
+there, as was his wont, and, to his delight, receiving intelligent
+replies adapted to the capacity of a thinking child. He was very anxious
+to know something more about the priests of Baal, but, after a brief
+identification of them with the idolatrous worshippers of the sun, the
+stranger, having ascertained that he could read, referred him to the
+Bible for further information.
+
+They had reached the well-trodden turning to the ford. The sun had by
+this time set, and twilight was closing in.
+
+'I presume our ways part here,' observed the tall stranger. 'Good-bye.
+Do not forget what I have told you. Brave boys who fear God, and do
+their duty to their fellows, do not dread the aspect of a few grey old
+stones.'
+
+'I'm not afraid of stones, sir. I've got a heap, and I build with them.
+But Rhys kicks them over and says I waste my time.'
+
+'So you build with stones, do you? And, pray, what do you build?' asked
+the gentleman, with a comical smile, unseen in the twilight. 'Do you
+think you could build a bridge over this treacherous river? You would do
+good service if you could,' he added, _sotto voce_.
+
+William felt abashed. He had an uncomfortable suspicion he was being
+laughed at.
+
+'I am only a boy, sir. I can only _try_ to build. But when I am a man,
+Rhys shall see!'
+
+'And who is Rhys?' put the other, resuming his walk when he found the
+boy did not turn towards the cottage by the ford.
+
+'Rhys is my big brother. But, if you please, sir, what do be a
+_bridge?_'
+
+Without evincing any surprise at the ignorance of a boy of his class
+and age, who could not have travelled far from home, the other answered
+promptly, 'A bridge is a roadway built _over_ a river so that people may
+walk or ride across without wetting their feet. Bridges are sometimes
+built of wood, sometimes of stone or brick. A bridge is sadly wanted
+hereabouts, my boy. I narrowly escaped being swept away at the ford this
+morning.'
+
+William drew in his breath. 'Oh-h-h! Would a bridge have saved my father
+from being drowned?'
+
+'It would preserve any one who had occasion to cross.'
+
+'Then I'll build one when I'm a man, 'deed I will,' came promptly.
+
+The stranger, amused by William's earnestness, put some few questions,
+in his turn, respecting his father's death, his name, and occupation,
+ascertained whence arose his peculiar fancy for building, and suggested
+that if the church had attracted him so much he should contrive to visit
+the ruins of Caerphilly Castle, which he would find much more wonderful
+as a building; adding that he would have to cross a drawbridge to get
+into the castle.
+
+'Why, mother and Rhys go to Caerphilly market every week. They never
+told me of the wonderful castle, whatever! But I'll go myself,' cried
+William, his imagination fired, and his indignation rising under the
+supposition that he had been kept wilfully in the dark. It did not occur
+to him that familiarity had taken the wonder out of the ancient pile for
+his elders.
+
+They had reached the foot of the steep ascent to the farm, which
+William pointed out with some pride as his home, and there the
+stranger--who said he was on his way to the vicarage--took leave of him,
+saying that his name was Morris, and perhaps they might meet again some
+day, for he was interested in stone, but it was ironstone and not for
+building. However, before he went, he gave the boy a word or two of
+advice.
+
+'Remember,' said he, 'you have a character to build before you think of
+building houses and churches, and a _boy_ may begin to build that.'
+
+'How?' was asked, William's grey eyes opening wide.
+
+'By fearing God, and doing his duty. But there are bad characters as
+well as good ones, and every act of disobedience, of untruthfulness, of
+indolence, goes to build up the evil in place of the good.'
+
+He had left William something to ponder. That was a memorable
+encounter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+CAERPHILLY CASTLE.
+
+
+A country vicar in the last century bore little or no resemblance to a
+clergyman of any status in this. He was a much more homely and
+patriarchal character, especially among the Welsh mountains.
+
+Whatever his learning or his eloquence, he did not hesitate to till his
+own glebe-lands, or to perform offices from which the pastor of to-day
+would shrink as derogatory to his cloth. As a rule, his stipend was
+small, and necessity compelled him so to labour. He came, however,
+nearer to his flock in consequence.
+
+When Mrs. Edwards, the Sunday following William's escapade, besought the
+Rev. John Smith to admonish her refractory son, who perversely and
+sullenly refused obedience to his eldest brother, idling and playing
+with stones when he should be at work on the farm, and wandering no one
+knew whither when reproved, she was surprised to hear him say--
+
+'Um, ah, yes, I wanted to have a word with that boy of yours. But which
+am I to admonish, the eldest, who should set an example of brotherly
+love and consideration, or the youngest, who resents what he regards as
+petty persecution and overbearing assumption?'
+
+''Deed, sir, Rhys has only set a good example to the rest. He do work
+hard upon the farm all day, and teach them to read at night; and he do
+have a right to expect them to look up to him, and do what he tells
+them; for you see, sir, he do be grown quite a young man, and a good
+farmer too, look you.'
+
+'Um, ah, yes, yes. I see. I understand all about it, Mrs. Edwards,' was
+the vicar's running comment; 'I'll admonish the offender,' the twinkle
+in his genial blue eyes, as he turned to accost another parishioner,
+puzzling her greatly.
+
+However, as there was peace between the brothers for a considerable
+time, the widow congratulated herself on bespeaking the good vicar's
+interference.
+
+She was not aware, for Rhys did not think proper to say, that, after
+asking him confidentially if the gossip he had heard about himself and
+William was true, and what were the rights of the case, the vicar, out
+of his own mouth, had convicted him of a want of brotherly kindness and
+forbearance, and had 'admonished' him to remember what a lazy lad _he_
+had been prior to his father's death, and had asked how he would have
+liked an elder brother to come hectoring over him in those days? In
+short, he read Rhys an informal homily on arrogant assumption, and the
+need to exercise a degree of lenity towards a brother so much younger,
+who was in all probability no worse than he had been himself. It was
+something like a pinprick to an inflated balloon.
+
+Rhys did not hold his head quite so high as usual when he joined Cate
+and her father at the churchyard stile; and was so quiet during the walk
+homeward that Cate tossed her hat-crowned red head about in offended
+pettishness, and Owen looked at him askance, wondering what the good
+vicar had said to take all the brightness out of him.
+
+William was no less reticent. But, child though he was, he lived in a
+dream-world of his own, and had ceased to reveal his inner self on the
+domestic hearth, scared by the loud laughter and mockery that greeted
+his curious inquiries and precocious remarks.
+
+In his silence, therefore, there was nothing to surprise his mother, who
+had fallen in with the general opinion that he was sullen. She had seen
+the vicar lead him aside, and took the reprimand for granted.
+
+The opening words of his conversation with the nine years boy did not
+seem much like a reprimand.
+
+'So, William, I hear you are going to be a great builder? And Mr. Morris
+tells me you want to know all about the Tower of Babel and Solomon's
+Temple, the Druidical temples, and St. Helen's Church here, with bridges
+and I do not know what beside. Now which of all these are we to talk
+about first?'
+
+He had unlocked the boy's heart as with a magic key. Here was some one
+else who did not laugh at him. Their conversation lasted little over a
+quarter of an hour, and William was frequently the catechist, but it
+broke off like a serial story, 'to be continued.' And though it had been
+chiefly about building and builders, the vicar had not let the boy go
+away without a few words of gentle advice on his duty to himself and
+others--a lesson referred back to the two tablets of stone delivered to
+Moses amid the fiery terrors of Sinai.
+
+After that there was generally a Sunday morning chat in the churchyard,
+and on one occasion the vicar took the boy home with him to dinner, a
+distinction that puzzled Mrs. Edwards exceedingly, and made Rhys no less
+jealous.
+
+The vicar, a small man surmounted by a big clerical wig, had simply
+shown the boy a few architectural pictures in illustrated books, with a
+brief description of his own, the letterpress being English, and the
+boy's education stopping short at Welsh.
+
+There was a water-colour drawing upon the parlour wall of a ruined
+castle with a tower that had been rent from battlement to base, and
+appeared in the act of falling. It was too remarkable to escape
+William's observation. He eyed it intently for some minutes. At length
+he asked, 'What place is that, sir?'
+
+'That? Oh, that is Caerphilly Castle, the oldest fortress in Cambria. Do
+you not know it?'
+
+'No, but I mean to go there when the tailor comes to make me some proper
+clothes. The packman let me have the cloth for the stockings I have
+knitted, look you.'
+
+'Um, ah. So you are in a hurry to discard the ancient Cymric kilt are
+you?'
+
+'They make one look so like a girl,' was William's shamefaced answer.
+
+'Yet there are grown men both in Wales and in Scotland who still cling
+to the kilt, and are proud of it. You will be for casting off the old
+Saxon smock-frock next.'
+
+''Deed no, sir. Men wear smock-frocks, women don't. Rhys wears one and
+Evan too.'
+
+But, ancient or modern, no sooner had William a chance of an exchange
+for a short-tailed coat and a pair of knee-breeches than he felt he had
+made a step towards manhood, much as Davy had done before him--Davy, who
+went plodding along from day to day and from week to week, with scarcely
+a thought that did not centre in the farm, and who never troubled
+himself about 'whys' or 'wherefores.'
+
+'William is not at church to-day. How is that?' remarked the vicar to
+Mrs. Edwards on the Whitsunday, as he took his customary stroll among
+his parishioners in all the importance of his wig and three-cornered
+hat, noting each newly flower-decked grave as he went, and perhaps
+making a kindly remark in passing.
+
+''Deed, sir, I thought he would be here. He was dressed before any of
+us. Ales said he was proud as a peony of his new clothes, and had gone
+off first to show himself. He do be a strange boy.'
+
+'Did Rhys say anything to him about them?'
+
+'Yes, sure, he told him that now he was being dressed like a man he
+hoped he would cease to be playing with stones like a baby.'
+
+'Um, ah, yes, yes. I thought as much. You need not be alarmed if William
+is not home until late. I can partly guess where he has gone. He is not
+doing any harm, my good friend. He is in much less danger than Rhys, I
+can assure you.'
+
+Mrs. Edwards looked up in the vicar's expressive face, and following the
+glance of his pleasantly twinkling eye, her own rested on her eldest
+son, carefully handing Cate Griffith over the tall stile.
+
+She knew nothing of electricity, but certainly something like an
+electric shock passed through her, with its instantaneous enlightenment.
+A moment she stood dazed, then turned to address the vicar, but he was
+gone, and talking with a grey-haired old couple of a son who had been
+lost at sea, who had no grave to be dressed with flowers that
+Whitsuntide.
+
+William was forgotten in the newer care. There was no mistaking the
+attitude, the tender expression in the face of Rhys, or the coquettish
+aspect of the ruddy maiden as she placed her plump brown hand in his.
+
+'Sure,' said the widow to herself, 'Cate could get over a stile without
+help. I've seen her climb a tree or get over a wall before now. _That's_
+why Mrs. Griffith's been so ready to let Cate come to the farm to help
+at harvest-time, or whenever we were pushed. I see it all now, and the
+fear lest she should go home by herself after dark, as if the road did
+not be straight enough. And him a boy, not twenty yet. What do the woman
+be thinking of? Do she be thinking I would let Cate come on the farm as
+Rhys' wife, when Ales and Evan get married? Oh, Rhys, Rhys, and me a
+widow with three younger ones to rear, look you!'
+
+Jonet and Davy, standing close beside her, during her brief colloquy
+with the vicar, had no clue to the significance of his hint or his
+glance; but they could read the trouble on their mother's puckering
+brow, without suspicion of its cause.
+
+'What be the matter, mother?' asked Jonet anxiously, sidling up to her
+and slipping a small palm into the larger one. 'Do you be uneasy about
+Willem?'
+
+''Deed, Willem's all right. The vicar said so. You need not fret over
+him,' said Davy placidly. 'He will be gone to show Robert Jones his new
+clothes.'
+
+'Yes, yes, sure, that will be it,' assented the widow, smoothing her
+ruffled countenance with an effort, unwilling to share her discovery
+with either Davy or Jonet, although the former was by this time quite as
+old as Rhys had been when he felt himself entitled to assume a general
+protectorate of the family.
+
+Taking Jonet by the hand, she made her way across the churchyard more
+hastily than usual, barely nodding in recognition of an acquaintance who
+advanced a step or so in expectation of a chat. Her desire was to keep
+Rhys and Cate in sight, and so confirm or dispel her newly-aroused
+suspicions.
+
+But there were others before her at the stile, a father and mother, with
+three or four young children, to be helped up the steps on one side and
+down the other, and by the time her turn came, Rhys and the Griffiths
+were well in advance, and lost to sight by a bend in the road.
+
+Davy was always inclined to saunter along, and Jonet, however brisk at
+starting, began to drag heavily after the first mile on the return,
+encumbered by her Sunday shoes.
+
+For all that neither William nor Rhys were at home when they got there,
+and the rare Sunday's dinner of boiled meat and potatoes was on the
+table, with buttermilk to wash it down, before the latter came hurrying
+in, his cheeks aglow.
+
+The uneasy look on Mrs. Edwards' face had not been set aside with her
+hat and cloak--worn in all seasons on account of uncertain skies--nor
+had she found it as easy to conceal her displeasure with a smile, as it
+was to cover her best linsey-woolsey skirt with a fair linen apron.
+
+'Has not Willem come in?' asked Rhys, glancing round the kitchen.
+
+'No!' said his mother curtly, 'and _you_ have not been hurrying
+yourself.'
+
+'Owen Griffith kept me talking about the success of his new crop of
+potatoes. He says that his brothers, and Roberts, and Lloyd are all for
+trying them next year.'
+
+'Potatoes, indeed!' his mother jerked out, and he looked up at her. But
+he set her evident ill-humour down to the absence of William, as did
+both Evan and Ales.
+
+And where was William rambling that bright Whitsunday morning, when he
+should have been helping his mother to dress his father's grave with
+flowers?
+
+Had he gone, as suggested, to parade his manly suit before his friend
+Robert Jones?
+
+Not he; that would hardly have accounted for his absence from church,
+since the turf-cutter's cottage was on the direct road-side.
+
+No. When the vicar was giving out his text, William Edwards was studying
+a 'sermon in stones,' his text being Caerphilly Castle, and he standing
+in blank awe and amazement beneath the barbican towers of the only
+drawbridge time has spared out of the original thirteen, much as he had
+stood in infancy overpowered by the comparative vastness of Eglwysilan's
+church when he was first brought face to face with it.
+
+And now it was but a dumpy boy of nine who stood transfixed by that
+approach to a stronghold, 'of which the very ruins are stupendous,' a
+boy unread in history, who knew nothing of the Romans, or of Beli Gwar,
+or of Robert Fitzhamon, or of any of the conjectural first-founders, or
+of Edward the First who added so largely to its strength and size. He
+could see that it stood encircled by water in a wide plain surrounded by
+dark and barren mountains, but had any one informed him that it occupied
+an area equal to Windsor Castle he would have been no wiser, never
+having seen a castle before, or heard of any Windsor except the lord of
+the soil around his home.
+
+With mountains he was familiar. Their grandeur did not oppress him. They
+were the work of the infinite God who made the whole world, who set the
+sun and the moon and stars high in the heavens to give us light. The
+creation of the universe by the Almighty hand was no new idea in the
+boy's mind. But that men, only _men_, should have put that vast pile
+together, its towers, its massive walls that had outlasted hundreds of
+years, was suggestive of possibilities and capabilities that took his
+breath away.
+
+He stood there long, not so much because he was tired with his
+five-miles' rough walk that hot morning, but to overcome his first
+sensations of awe. Then he passed between the two great towers, and
+traversed courts and alleys, citadel, hall, chapel, whatever the
+pillared areas, the vast walls and arched windows, may suggest to
+antiquaries. To the boy they suggested only a marvellous enigma it was
+his fixed determination to solve _some_ day.
+
+In his explorations he had to scramble over the fragmentary ruins of a
+second drawbridge between flanking towers, over which the friendly ivy
+had thrown an evergreen mantle. Here he stood gazing astonished at the
+mass of solid masonry which had walled the castle in, and at a great
+arched gateway under which he passed. He groped his way down to an
+underground chamber where had been a smelting furnace and a mint; and
+from that wonder of wonders, a staircase to the turret-top.
+
+But nothing held him so spellbound as the leaning tower, which, with
+chambers and passages complete, and outer walls full ten feet thick,
+overhung its base nearly four yards, a threatening mass that so had hung
+in mid air since the convulsion that had rent the tower in twain
+centuries before, yet held aloft as surely as the tower of Bologna or of
+Pisa.
+
+Nothing knew William of these, or of battles or sieges, or of the force
+of water let in on molten metal; but he could wonder how the stones held
+together, and he could argue with himself that what had been done might
+be done.
+
+Aladdin's enchanted garden of precious stones was nothing to what
+Caerphilly Castle was to the boy William Edwards.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+MAN PROPOSES.
+
+
+Although, being warned by previous experience, William had stuffed his
+new pockets with bread before leaving home in the morning, he found that
+was a sorry substitute for a hearty dinner, and when he limped home in
+the waning light of the long summer evening, supper at the farm was over
+and cleared away. It was a doleful prospect, for there was an aching
+void in his interior that all the wonders of Caerphilly Castle had not
+served to fill.
+
+He had left home jauntily enough in the morning, but give any lad of his
+years a ten-miles' walk on a hot summer day, on a rough road up hill and
+down dale, and add a couple more miles of scrambling over ruins, and I
+venture to say all the jauntiness would be taken out of him. He would
+look as dusty and limp and jaded as did William Edwards, and his secret
+enthusiasm would not prevent a wistful look at the table, bare of all
+save crumbs and milky rings where mugs had been.
+
+Rhys had stood propping up the door-post as he ascended the stony lane,
+and entered the enclosure in front of the house by the stile.
+
+'What do you mean by coming home at this time of night?' he cried
+sharply, catching his brother by the shoulder. 'Where have you been all
+day, you vagabond, wearing the shoes off your feet?'
+
+'I've not been after Cate Griffith,' was flung back in retort, and, as
+if a stone had struck him, the grip of Rhys on the shoulder relaxed, to
+let the 'vagabond' pass in.
+
+The empty table was not more expressive to him than was the averted
+countenance of his mother, who sat on the high-backed settle, her brow
+clouded, her unseeing eyes steadfastly gazing at the low hearth where
+the embers were smouldering into white ashes. Probably she did not see
+him as he dropped wearily down on a three-legged stool opposite.
+
+Davy sat at the table, half asleep, his face hidden on his folded arms.
+Evan was busy in the farmyard. He could hear his wooden shoes clattering
+over the stones. Ales was going in and out.
+
+Jonet, who had been watching for William's return, with her light-brown
+head and half her body stretched out of the bedroom window, came
+noiselessly across the wide kitchen. Her arm stole lovingly around his
+neck. 'You are tired, Willem; do you be hungry?'
+
+He gave her hand a squeeze and nodded. Her bare feet were off towards
+the dairy.
+
+There was a whispering in the passage. In a few minutes Ales brought in
+a mug of buttermilk and a great hunch of brown bread.
+
+'Here,' she cried, 'eat that; though you don't deserve it, going off no
+one knows where.'
+
+He thanked her for the unhoped-for supper, but he did not tell her where
+he had been, though he knew she had an old mother living somewhere in
+Caerphilly. Whereabouts he did not know, and, having no news of the poor
+rheumatic old woman, he munched his bread in silence.
+
+His mother never raised her head. If she saw him she made no sign. Rhys
+had been away all the afternoon. That lay heavier on her heart than any
+wanderings of William, though _he_ thought otherwise. There was no
+red-headed Cate lying in wait for her youngest born--no one seeking to
+steal his heart away from her. She was hesitating whether to take Rhys
+to task, or, as Ales suggested, to 'wait and let the waters pass.'
+
+But Jane Edwards had not a passive nature. She was more inclined to be
+up and doing than to wait. 'Yes,' she communed with herself, 'the waters
+may pass, but they may carry my Rhys with them. I want no Cate ordering
+about here; the artful jade!'
+
+As if the very thought had been a stimulus, she rose abruptly, and,
+passing out into the moonlight, joined her son, who was bending over the
+low stone wall, looking intently down the rugged slope.
+
+'What are you looking for, Rhys?'
+
+He gave a sudden start as she went on, 'Do you be watching the moonlight
+on the river, and thinking how different was the night that took your
+father from us?'
+
+She put her arm within his as she spoke, and laid her head, in its white
+linen cap, against his shoulder.
+
+'Ah, Rhys, that was a terrible time, a terrible time. But, thanks be to
+God, we won through it. And it made a man of you, my dear boy. Well do I
+remember how you came to comfort me, and promised always to be a good
+son, and do your duty by me, and by the children, and by the farm, in
+the sight of God. And you have always done it, Rhys, _fach_, always--
+And--and--it would be breaking my heart, Rhys, if--if--you should be
+caring more for some one else than for your promise--or for your
+mother--and--and for Jonet--and the others.' And there she paused, but
+he made no response, and she continued.
+
+The latter half of the sentence was sobbed rather than spoken, and Rhys,
+who had a tender heart, notwithstanding his contempt for William's
+day-dreams, was deeply moved by her emotion.
+
+For the moment, Cate and his own day-dreams were lost sight of.
+
+'Mother, dear,' said he, not perhaps so truthfully as might have been,
+though he felt at the time that all he said _was_ true. 'Mother, no one
+can ever come between us, or make me forget my old promise. What makes
+you be thinking so to-night? Have I not done my duty so far?' And now
+his strong arm went round her with more than the old protectorate.
+
+'Yes, yes, indeed, Rhys, you have always been a good son; but--but--you
+have been something different of late--and--I thought, perhaps, Elain
+Lloyd--or--or--Cate Griffith might have been looking out for you, and
+for stealing your heart away from us all, look you.'
+
+He began a fresh disclaimer at the mention of Elain Lloyd, but stopped
+short, and she could feel him wince and hold his breath when the name of
+Cate Griffith followed.
+
+The denial died upon his lips. There was a pause. Early or precipitate
+marriages are not common in Wales. The consent of parents must first be
+obtained, and he had not yet spoken of marriage to Cate, but he knew the
+anticipation lurked in both their hearts, and there was a momentary
+struggle between two loves--two duties.
+
+His mother's emotion had moved him as no angry words could have done,
+and so moved him that at the moment he would have given up Cate or any
+one to console her.
+
+'Yes, yes, mother, _fach_; Cate is a nice girl--and we are very good
+friends, the best of friends; but you need not be afraid; I am not going
+to bring her, or any one else whatever, to disturb you, indeed no.'
+
+If there was a mental reservation, 'at least not just yet,' the words
+were unspoken.
+
+And so, with a kiss of peace between mother and son, the disturbing
+spirit was laid at rest.
+
+At rest--that was, on the surface--and for the time being.
+
+True to his promise, and with an unappreciated effort, Rhys confined his
+attentions to Cate to the walk home from church, and was apparently less
+desirous to loiter with her in the rear of her parents. With commendable
+self-repression--seeing that his own inclination ran counter to his
+filial bond--he found occupation on the farm when otherwise he might
+have had an errand that should take him across the shallow brook and
+past the weaver's cottage. Or, if he had really business that way, he
+showed less disposition to linger at open door or window.
+
+Cate resented this with pettishness, and the transference of her winning
+smiles to Robert, the young brother of Elain Lloyd, until the coolness
+became coldness mingled with pique, and the two passed each other at
+church or on the road with affected indifference.
+
+Had there been an absolute quarrel, it might have spent itself in
+reproaches, or been made up when the storm-cloud had passed, but this
+unexplained reserve went on for months and months, and the breach
+continued open.
+
+Mrs. Edwards ought to have been satisfied with the result of her
+interference, and for a time she was. But somehow the temper of Rhys had
+not improved. His assertion of mastership became more pronounced. He and
+William came into frequent collision as the weeks and months rounded
+into years, and the harmony of the household was disturbed. Jonet
+appealed to her mother against his dictatorship, and even Davy roused
+from his passivity and objected 'to be ordered about like a hired
+labourer.'
+
+There was no denying that Brookside Farm had materially improved under
+the new system of cropping and manuring Evan Evans had introduced, or
+that half the farmers in the parish had begun to plant potatoes since
+the root had proved so profitable there. Then there was land under
+cultivation that had formerly lain waste, and Mrs. Edwards was no longer
+in dread of the rent-day, or of Mr. Pryse, let him scowl as he would.
+
+She was always ready to give Evan the credit, and to pay him well for
+his services. But her eldest son, having profited by the man's
+instructions through a succession of years, began to think himself wiser
+than his teacher, and either argued against or disapproved most of his
+suggestions, whether for the cultivation of the land or the treatment of
+the stock. Rhys had been a mere boy when Evan came upon the farm, and
+the others quite children. It was scarcely likely that he who had seen
+them grow up was to submit to the young fellow's rule as if their ages
+were reversed.
+
+Night after night, when Evan and Ales sat up together courting after the
+rest were in bed, as was the old custom, he would talk over some fresh
+slight or indignity received from Rhys, and declare his intention to
+quit the farm and get married at the next yearly hirings.
+
+''Deed, and it is not that I would like to be doing Mrs. Edwards an ill
+turn, in taking you away before Jonet is old enough to supply your
+place, in some sort, Ales, _fach_, or in going and leaving Rhys to do as
+he likes; but I am too old to be ordered about and taught my business by
+him, whatever. His good mother did never be doing it--and it's time we
+was be thinking of that little cottage at Castella, with the nice bit of
+land that would serve for a pig and a cow. We would soon be wanting
+another field and another cow, Ales, and we could have your mother over
+from Caerphilly to live with us--yes, indeed.'
+
+'Yes, indeed, Evan; but I do be thinking Jonet do not be strong or tall
+enough to lift the dasher of the big churn, and it would come hard on
+Mrs. Edwards if she did be having to make the butter come. We do better
+be waiting a bit longer, or there's Rhys would be bringing Cate Griffith
+here to plague his mother's heart; yes, sure.'
+
+And so from time to time it was proposed, and from time to time put off,
+Evan growing more and more dissatisfied at being thrust into the
+background, until, at length, when nearly three more years had spun
+their uneven thread, Ales consented to quit Brookside for the cottage at
+Castella, and Mrs. Edwards, weary of adjusting differences, endeavoured
+to persuade herself that now her sons and her daughter were growing up
+around her, they should be able to manage well without them, and,
+indeed, save something in food and wages.
+
+At the first announcement of their decision, Rhys brisked up
+wonderfully. He shook Evan by the hand as if there had never been a
+difference between them, and congratulated him on his sensible choice,
+and on his prospect of happiness, with quite friendly interest.
+
+William was the only one at all depressed by the proposed changes. Evan
+and Ales had frequently stood between him and overbearing Rhys; he had
+become attached to them, and felt he should lose two good friends when
+they married and went away. So there was a note of regret in his
+congratulations.
+
+The thatched cottage at Castella was taken, duly whitewashed within and
+without, and the earthen floor relaid and left to harden. But Evan had
+promised Ales that she should have glass windows, and for these, and for
+his farming implements, he would have to make a journey to Cardiff. He
+had engaged a local carpenter to make a bed, a wooden settle, a table,
+and platter shelves. Ales herself had a pretty fair collection of useful
+articles in the shape of pots, bowls, and mugs, stowed away in the barn,
+having added to her store whenever the packman came his rounds. And she
+had, besides, a goodly pair of thick blankets, of which she was not a
+little proud, having spun the wool in spare hours when her other work
+was done, to say nothing of flannel and linsey-woolsey for wedding
+garments--under-linen was then and there of no account. Mrs. Edwards had
+promised Ales a new felt hat and a shawl for the auspicious occasion,
+and they bade fair to make a good start according to the ideas then
+prevailing. It would be thought little of nowadays, when art has found
+its way into the humblest abodes. But what had never been known or heard
+of could not be missed, and the absolute wants of nature are really very
+few.
+
+As their yearly servitude happened to terminate alike at Martinmas, Mrs.
+Edwards kindly proposed their continuance on the farm whilst Ales
+completed some needful preparations, and Evan made his important journey
+to Cardiff. The wedding was to take place soon after his return, for the
+Rev. John Smith had been notified, and read out the banns, for the first
+time, on the last Sunday in September, the faithful pair looking down
+and blushing crimson as the eyes of the whole congregation turned
+towards them.
+
+They left the church together, feeling half-married, nothing doubting
+that the ceremony would be completed three weeks later.
+
+But they had calculated without Mr. Pryse.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+WHERE IS EVAN?
+
+
+The difference between a full-face portrait and a profile is not so
+great as the different aspect the same individual may present to
+different people. To his noble employer, Mr. Pryse was the very
+beau-ideal of a shrewd business man,--clear-headed, active, and
+indefatigable in his interests and that of the large estate under his
+control,--a man on whom he could rely, for dealing conscientiously alike
+with himself and his tenants, in his absence.
+
+Those tenants saw only a hard, grasping, unscrupulous agent, who
+extorted high rents, made no allowance for bad seasons or failing crops,
+and who stifled complaints with an extra turn of the screw. They knew
+that all repairs and improvements, made at their own cost, would be
+wrested to the advantage of the noble landowner in the long-run, and
+were disheartened. There was an unwhisperable suspicion afloat that
+these said repairs went down as deductions from rents in the accounts
+submitted to his lord; but who ever had a chance of overhauling those
+accounts, or questioning crafty Mr. Pryse's unimpeachable integrity?
+
+And about the time when William Edwards first found his way to
+Caerphilly Castle, which was in the year after George II. ascended the
+throne, the first faint breaths of a graver suspicion were wafted
+northwards, from Cardiff, in unaccountable and mysterious undertones.
+
+Cardiff, now a flourishing and busy seaport, was then, in spite of its
+great castle, but a small, mean, and unimportant town, hardly to be
+called a port, its ancient prestige having fallen away like its gates
+and walls.
+
+But about this period Mr. Pryse ceased to collect his lord's rents
+regularly at Caerphilly, and required that they should be brought to his
+office in Cardiff. This was a woful grievance to the bulk of the
+tenants, especially to elderly or infirm persons, or others remote from
+the county town. Had his lordship been at the Castle, no doubt his irate
+tenants would have sought his presence in a body, and made common cause
+against the common oppressor; but no such opportunity occurred.
+
+Neighbours who dreaded the toil of a nineteen or twenty miles' journey
+along bad roads in bad weather, with Mr. Pryse at the end, and as
+wearisome a return, would meet and agree to trust the bravest of the
+party with the separate rents of two or three, having no fear of robbery
+by the way, whilst so many other travellers would be fallen in with, all
+bent on the same errand.
+
+Some of these adventurous wights, who had never been so far as Cardiff
+in their lives before, brought back the news, either gathered on the
+spot or on the road, that a strange craft had begun to frequent the
+river, and to anchor off the old sea-wall. It was said that the vessel
+had been a privateer during the wars of the previous reign, and that
+although she came thither ostensibly for coal from his lordship's
+collieries, and Mr. Pryse was in close communication with the captain,
+there was something rather mysterious about her cargo.
+
+[Illustration: THERE WAS SOMETHING RATHER MYSTERIOUS ABOUT HER CARGO.
+--_See page 164._]
+
+It was darkly hinted that the barrels which came pannier-wise on long
+strings of horses from the Caerphilly colliery laden with coal, and were
+hauled on board to be emptied, were not returned empty, but, when again
+slung across the backs of the patient beasts waiting on the old quay,
+seemed no lighter than before; and knowing ones surmised, from the care
+with which they were handled, that smaller kegs were slipped inside the
+open coal barrels. At all events, it was whispered that the teamsters
+lingered long at roadside inns, and that some of them struck into
+by-ways instead of making direct for the colliery with their empties.
+And it was certain that foreign spirits could be procured by the
+initiated where only _cwrw da_ or cider had been hitherto obtainable.
+
+This had been going on for three years when Evan, the
+bridegroom-expectant, prepared for his journey to Cardiff, whence he
+proposed to bring Ales her golden wedding-ring, as well as a number of
+small articles--not included in the 'furnishing list' of cumbrous
+goods--to be ferried across the river for after-conveyance to his new
+cottage.
+
+To Mrs. Edwards the enforced journey to Cardiff for the payment of rent
+had been a trouble and a grievance. She had not cared to send hot-headed
+Rhys by himself into a town which she pictured as full of temptations
+for young men, neither had she cared to go thither alone. Twice had she
+taken her son with her; once she had made the toilsome journey in
+company with Owen Griffith; at other times she had entrusted him with
+the rent-money. But now that Evan was bent thither on business of his
+own, her natural thrift suggested the employment of him as her deputy,
+so as to save the toil of the journey, and innkeeper's charges for
+herself and her beast.
+
+Owen Griffith, too, was glad of a trustworthy substitute; so that when
+Evan kissed Ales, and shook hands with the rest as he bestrode good old
+Breint at the farmhouse gate, he carried a goodly sum under his new
+frieze riding-coat, in one pocket or other, nearly all the savings of
+Ales, in addition to his own, and the two rents.
+
+His departure was quite an event. Owen Griffith and Cate had walked up
+the hill to hand him the money and see him off, though the hour was
+early, and a drizzling rain had begun to fall. But rain was no new thing
+among the mountains, and nobody cared for that, though, doubtless, they
+would have preferred fair weather as more auspicious.
+
+However, Ales flung an old shoe after him, and called out--
+
+'For luck, Evan!'
+
+He looked back over his shoulder to nod his thanks in reply; whereupon
+she threw her apron over her head and ran into the house ready to cry
+because he had 'spoiled his luck' by looking back.
+
+Mrs. Edwards, too, would have been better pleased had he gone on with
+face set forward, but she cried, 'God keep him, and bring him safe
+back!' as if to counteract the untoward prognostic. Yet a cloud was
+gathering on her own brow, for though Owen Griffith walked beside the
+horse down the stony incline, Cate remained leaning against the stone
+gate-post talking earnestly with Rhys, the flush on her countenance
+deepening as he bent his head and lowered his voice to meet her ear
+only.
+
+'The bold-faced huzzie!' the mother ejaculated to herself, as she turned
+to go indoors. 'Can she not let Ales get out of the house before she be
+coming a-seeking Rhys to worm herself in! Sure, and she do be in a
+mighty hurry to make up the old quarrel, and secure Rhys, and Owen do be
+as bad as his girl. But Ales is not gone yet!' she jerked out
+half-aloud, then checked herself, wondering what could have put those
+ill-timed words into her head.
+
+She was mistaken. Cate Griffith was not quite so bold as she imagined.
+The quarrel had been made up some weeks, and, what was more, made up by
+Rhys, with a plain-spoken offer to make her his wife when Ales was
+married and gone away.
+
+What he had been saying, as Evan rode away down hill, was singularly
+enough, 'We shall not have long to wait now, Cate, darling. Ales will
+soon be gone, and mother will be missing her so much she will be glad to
+see me bring so clever and smart a wife home to fill the vacant place.
+Jonet could not do it. No, really! We shall not have long to be waiting,
+Cate, _fach_.'
+
+
+     'The best laid schemes o' mice an' men
+                        Gang aft agley.'
+
+
+Centuries before Burns crystallised the sentiment into verse its
+profound truth had been established. Who, besides Noah and his family,
+calculated on the Deluge?
+
+Were the tears Ales shed, when her long-loved Evan turned his head,
+premonitory of another deluge?
+
+She was a strong, healthy young woman, not a puling sentimentalist
+afflicted with 'nerves.' She might well cover her face, ashamed of her
+starting tears, when he would be back with her in four days--or five, at
+the furthest!
+
+Yet she was unaccountably restless those days. The outdoor work of the
+farm went on pretty much as usual, though the weather was unsettled.
+Rhys and Davy were thrashing and winnowing in the barn, and William,
+endeavouring to do the work of two, fed and foddered the cattle, and
+took the place of Ales at the churn, whilst she washed and ironed, and
+put little finishing touches to her simple wedding finery, sighing,
+every now and again, for the Evan she missed every hour of the day. When
+candles were lit, and at meal-times, the blank caused by the absence of
+his smiling face and good-humoured observation, was felt by all, from
+Mrs. Edwards down to William.
+
+And somehow, as the days went by, Jane Edwards began to share the
+fidgetiness of Ales, and, when the fourth passed, and the fifth wore
+slowly away, could not help frequent ejaculations, such as, 'It's time
+Evan was here!' 'What do be keeping Evan so long?' 'Sure to goodness
+nothing's gone wrong!' Ales growing still and white, with a strange fear
+that began to creep about her heart.
+
+Evan had gone away on the Monday morning. Ere nightfall on Friday,
+William slipped out and hurried to the ford, as if to meet him, passing
+Owen Griffith at the foot of the hill, on his way to the farm to express
+his own surprise at the messenger's delay.
+
+William waited and waited, but there was no sign of Evan. He got back to
+hear Griffith questioning Ales as to the various business her sweetheart
+had on hand, the conclusion being that he had not been able to make all
+his purchases, or get them conveyed to Castella, as readily as he had
+calculated, and that he must be allowed another day.
+
+But Saturday came and went without a sign of the traveller, and Ales
+seemed to feel the alarm of all in her own aching heart.
+
+Neither Evan nor Ales was at church on the Sunday to hear the banns read
+the second time.
+
+But people were there to testify that Evan Evans had reached Cardiff in
+safety, and had been seen to enter the office of Mr. Pryse.
+
+On that, Owen Griffith and Mrs. Edwards breathed more freely. Their
+fears that he had been waylaid and robbed were set at rest. It was clear
+his own affairs had alone detained him.
+
+William, on his own inspiriting, had betaken himself to Caerphilly, and
+brought Ales back the comforting news that her Evan had carried the
+basket of butter and cheese to her old mother, and arranged for her
+removal to Castella with them.
+
+So far all was right. But when another week went by, and no Evan came to
+claim her, or to bring the rent receipts, the heart of Ales sank lower
+and lower; every whisper in the house was suggestive of doubt, and
+pierced her bosom like a stab.
+
+Owen Griffith was there nightly making fresh inquiries, often bringing
+Cate along with him, when Ales' heart was wrung with undertoned
+suspicions of her true love's fidelity--not to say his honesty.
+
+At the three weeks' end, when the poor tortured girl had resolved on
+walking all the way to Cardiff, to set doubt at rest, the climax came.
+
+It came like a thunderbolt, in the person of Mr. Pryse, to make an
+authoritative demand for the half-year's rent, then overdue.
+
+It was in vain Mrs. Edwards declared it had been paid; that she had sent
+the money by Evan Evans.
+
+'In that case you will have the receipt. Produce it,' said he, with a
+sneer.
+
+'I cannot,' replied she, in much perplexity. 'Evan has not yet returned.
+But he was seen to enter your office; yes, indeed!'
+
+'Oh yes, he did come to my office to pay your neighbour Owen Griffith's
+rent, and to beg a fortnight's grace for you. I have been good enough to
+give you three weeks, and now I _must_ have the rent--one way or other.'
+
+The evil smile of triumph on his wicked old face, as he said this, was
+lost on Mrs. Edwards in her consternation.
+
+'Beg _what_? I did want no fortnight's grace. I did send the golden
+guineas!'
+
+Mr. Pryse's thin lip curled. 'Then your man kept them. And it is rather
+strange he should pay Griffith's rent if he meant to make off with
+yours. There must be lying and dishonesty somewhere.'
+
+'Yes, indeed,' broke from Ales, in a passion of indignant wrath. 'But
+not from my mistress or Evan Evans; they do both be God-fearing and
+true.'
+
+An ominous scowl drew down the brows under the English three-cornered
+hat.
+
+'Silence, you impudent jade, or I'll have you cast into jail for your
+vile insinuations. Wait until your _honest_ Evan comes back before you
+venture to asperse his lordship's deputy.' And he raised his
+riding-whip as if to strike her.
+
+Rhys had come upon the scene in the midst of this altercation, brought
+thither by a word from Lewis, who had seen the agent ride up the hill,
+with a sinister smile upon his face, and a ruffianly fellow in his rear.
+
+At once the hot-blooded young farmer, in a smock-frock showing many an
+earthy stain, interposed between his mother's faithful domestic and the
+steward, unawed by the gold lace or ruffles visible under the open
+riding-coat.
+
+'Nay, nay, we don't take whips to women in Eglwysilan, Mr. Pryse. What
+is all this uproar about? And what do be your business here, sir?'
+
+His mother attempted an explanation. Ales had shrunk back overawed.
+
+'I have come for the unpaid rent, and the costs attending this
+application,' Mr. Pryse thrust in, heedless of Rhys' disclaimer that
+'nothing was owing'; 'and, as no cash appears to be forthcoming, I take
+possession of the farm in the name of his lordship, and leave this man
+in charge of the premises, and I warn you against removing stock or
+stone. Take the inventory, Morgan'--to the man who had edged himself
+into the kitchen, and now put on a truculent air.
+
+William had come rushing in from the potato-field, but he stopped short,
+as much paralysed as his elders.
+
+His mother was the first to break the spell.
+
+'Paid or unpaid,' she cried, with the dignity of truth and honesty,
+'that wretch shall take no inventory here, whatever. I do not be without
+the means to pay your demand, though I protest that it is unjust, and
+will have to be returned to me when Evan returns with the receipt, look
+you.'
+
+'Ah, _when he does_. But you may take my word for it, the bird has flown
+away with your golden feathers, and is far enough from Wales by this
+time.'
+
+And again the sinister smile lighted the evil face, much as if he had
+good reason for knowing that Evan was far away, and that his word might
+therefore _be_ taken.
+
+'I am glad to see you are so well provided,' he added, as the widow
+proceeded to count out upon the table the sum demanded, leaving still a
+nest-egg in the grey stocking-foot. 'Your farm must be flourishing, and
+I herewith give you notice, in the presence of my man, Morgan, that your
+rent will be advanced ten pounds per annum after this date.--I will send
+you a receipt.'
+
+[Illustration: 'YOUR RENT WILL BE ADVANCED TEN POUNDS PER ANNUM AFTER
+THIS DATE,' HE SAID.--_See page 174._]
+
+'No, sir,' put in Rhys promptly, 'you will give my mother one now. I see
+your follower there has an inkhorn and paper.'
+
+Mr. Pryse bit his under lip, but thought well to take the hint.
+
+'And now, sir,' said Rhys, when he had assured himself the receipt was
+correct, 'you do be threatening to raise the rent. You cannot do that
+until the lease expires.'
+
+'Show me your lease,' demanded the agent loftily.
+
+'We can do that when necessary, sir. His lordship will be having a copy
+you can consult,' replied Rhys quite as loftily.
+
+And, seeing that he had a full-grown man to deal with, not a woman he
+could intimidate, Mr. Pryse turned on his heel, and mounted his horse,
+muttering something surly as he went, his disappointed functionary
+following at his heels.
+
+Once again he bit his nails as his horse carried him down the stony
+track, for even the coin he bore away did not cover his baffled rage at
+defeat. Presently his thin lips spread into a smile of
+self-congratulation, and his eyelids nearly met as he communed with
+himself.
+
+'It was lucky I did not call on Griffith for _his_ rent first. I
+clinched the nail on Evan's dishonest flight in acknowledging _that_. A
+clever idea of mine his begging grace for Edwards' widow. Covers his
+call at my office. I suppose that forward jade is the woman he was going
+to marry. She will wait a long while for a husband if she waits for Evan
+Evans, look you. And as for that cock-crowing Rhys, I'll cut his comb
+before I've done with him. He shall not crow over me with impunity; no,
+indeed. I've bled the old woman pretty freely this time. She'll not get
+over it in a hurry. The farm will go to the dogs now that long-headed
+farming-man is gone. Lease, indeed! I defy any power in earth or heaven
+to keep them on their farm when I am ready to turn them out. Yes,
+indeed!'
+
+A strong defiance _that_, Mr. Pryse, crafty and potential though you may
+be!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+A STOP-GAP.
+
+
+As soon as Mr. Pryse was gone, Mrs. Edwards sank down on the oaken
+settle exhausted with the conflict of disturbing thoughts, and the
+harassing scene in which she had just borne a part. The old
+stocking-foot, which had been her only possible savings bank all the
+years of her thrifty widowhood, lay, with her limp hand, in her lap, in
+a corresponding state of collapse. Only three weeks before it had been
+plump and pleasant to contemplate, a testimony to industry, and a pledge
+of future prosperity. Now, within those three short weeks, the full
+half-year's rent had been a second time withdrawn, with exorbitant costs
+in addition, and the residue had ample space to chink.
+
+There was a troubled aspect of careworn bewilderment on her countenance
+as she sat there, gazing abstractedly on her diminished store,
+endeavouring to reconcile the irreconcilable. And all the while Rhys was
+pacing the kitchen floor, with noisy tramp, in his wood-soled shoes,
+chafing and fuming over the cruel insolence of Mr. Pryse, as well as
+over their loss, yet wondering vaguely if there could be any truth in
+his allegations.
+
+He did not altogether trust Mr. Pryse, but he had never had his mother's
+unbounded confidence in Evan, and, as Owen Griffith had suggested, so
+much money in his hands all at once might have proved too great a
+temptation, or he might have got drunk and lost it, and been ashamed to
+return. (But Evan did not drink.)
+
+Now and then a sharp, jerky expletive gave expression to his crude
+doubts and suspicions, but he could not wring from his mother any word
+to strengthen his suspicions.
+
+'I do not be knowing what to think, Rhys!'--''Deed, Rhys, Evan has
+served us well, and Mr. Pryse is a bad man, your father said it.'--'Yes,
+indeed, it is a serious loss, but Evan helped us to get the
+money.'--'Yes, yes, Rhys, I do be aware you have worked hard too; but
+Evan, he did teach us new ways--and--after all,' she concluded, rising
+slowly to replace the depleted stocking in the coffer, 'we may thank God
+we had the money saved, or our farm would have gone from us, and we
+should have lost everything. Think of poor Ales, and don't be letting
+her hear you.'
+
+Poor Ales! William had found her in the dairy, bent down over the tall
+churn, with her head on her bare brown arms, sobbing as if her heart
+would break, less for herself than the aspersion cast on her true and
+faithful Evan. She had shrunk away, not from Mr. Pryse's whip, but from
+an evil tongue and a threat that cut worse than a whip-lash.
+
+Prisons were horrible dens before John Howard spent his life in
+dragging their iniquities to light, and purifying their foulness. 'Jail'
+was a word to daunt the strongest, for everywhere tales were rife how
+unscrupulous power thrust innocent men within their pestilential walls
+to perish, for no crime greater than debt or unguarded words.
+
+William comforted in vain.
+
+'Jail, Willem! He said he would send me to _jail_, only for standing up
+for honest people. But he is a rogue, Willem--a bad, wicked rogue,
+Willem.' She sobbed and shuddered as she gasped out the words. 'Yes,
+'deed! it will be that cruel Mr. Pryse that do be robbing the widow of
+her money--and--and my poor Evan of his good name. Yes, sure, and me of
+my dear husband that would have been this day! Oh, Willem _fach_, my
+poor heart will be breaking.'
+
+'Hush, Ales dear! don't say so,' implored the sympathetic boy, laying
+his hand tenderly upon her shoulder. 'Unkind words are hard to bear, I
+know'--and he sighed--'but nobody here will think Evan took our money
+and yours, and ran away from _you_.' (He might have altered his opinion
+could he have heard through the stone wall what Rhys was saying.) 'Cheer
+up; it will all come right when Evan gets back; yes, sure.'
+
+Ales startled William with the quick, energetic way she flung up her
+head and spoke--
+
+'Come back? He will not come back unless I can seek out what that wicked
+wretch has done with him. Would he be so sure of it, or dare to come
+here to rob your mother--yes, to rob her--if he did not know what he had
+done to keep my Evan from me? He may have put _him_ in jail to rot
+there. Oh!' (and she wrung her hands, brown and hard with honest
+toil)--'oh! or he may have had him _murdered_. He is bad enough for
+that!'
+
+'Hush, hush, Ales! Mr. Pryse would hardly do that; though he _is_ a bad
+man, and looked, oh, so wickedly pleased when he knocked down the Tower
+of Babel I was building. I'm afraid, Ales dear, he would not stick at
+much,' William added, after a moment's cogitation.
+
+'Name o' goodness, boy! He would stick at nothing whatever!' she cried,
+rising to her feet, and taking her cloak from a peg in the storeroom
+outside the dairy. 'But I am off to Cardiff to find Evan, or search out
+the truth; and do you pray for me, Willem, that I may succeed, and that
+no harm may come to me before I do.'
+
+'Stay, stay, Ales,' exclaimed William, catching at her cloak in the
+doorway; 'you cannot go all that way on foot, and alone, or at this time
+o' day.'
+
+Her voice was strangely quiet and determined as she answered--
+
+'The sun has not set. I shall reach Caerphilly before night, and can
+stay and rest with mother until morning.'
+
+''Deed, now, you had best be staying where you are till morning, and you
+shall have a horse to ride on. And if there is no one else to go with
+you, I will go myself, sure.'
+
+After some persuasion, Ales consented to the first proposition,
+absolutely declining to accept his proffered escort, saying, 'Now Evan
+be gone you cannot be spared. And, now the money be gone, you must give
+up playing with stones, and work well to keep the farm from the sly old
+fox. Ah, sure, and the fox might be glad to catch the young goose near
+his hole. No, no, Willem, _you_ must not run into danger. There be no
+need to break your mother's heart as well as mine. If God speed my
+errand I shall not be alone. Better God's arm than man's army.'
+
+As her cloak went back to the peg, William slipped out through the
+farmyard, and was off down hill as fast as his legs would carry him.
+Davy and Jonet, returning from the potato-field where they had been
+industriously at work, undisturbed and unaware of the overwhelming
+trouble nearer home, called out to know where he was going; but if he
+heard he did not answer.
+
+Supper--the old frugal meal of stiff leek porridge and milk--was on the
+table cooling when he returned out of breath, and whispered to Ales, as
+she carried out the porridge-pot, that their mutual friend, Robert
+Jones, had business of his own in Cardiff, and if she would join him at
+seven in the morning, where the roads met, she could ride all the way on
+one of his team. He did not tell her all he had said to enlist his old
+friend in her service, or how heartily the turf-cutter had responded,
+or that the man's errand was chiefly on her account.
+
+Robert Jones knew more of 'old Pryse' than she did, and hated him as
+sincerely.
+
+There had been some previous talk between Ales and her old mistress
+about the young woman's continuation on the farm unless Evan returned to
+claim her.
+
+'I'd rather serve you for nothing than go away before Evan's good name
+was cleared, 'deed I would. And it will be cleared some day, I know it
+will, whatever some folk may think.'
+
+She had said this with a full heart, meaning all she proposed, but Mrs.
+Edwards was too just to accept service on such terms from a tried and
+faithful maid in her hour of deep affliction. Besides, she had a feeling
+that whilst Ales was there, well-trained and active, Rhys would have
+less excuse to bring Cate on to the hearth. Motives are always more or
+less complex.
+
+The objections of Mrs. Edwards to Cate Griffith certainly were so. She
+would have conceded that 'the girl was good-looking, quick of foot, and
+ready of hand,' but she would have added also, 'ready with her tongue,
+and not quite straightforward in her ways.' Then, if she must be deposed
+by her eldest son's wife, she would have been better pleased had he
+looked higher, and gone courting where there would be a little money to
+come home with the bride. Cate would have none to bring.
+
+With such feelings uppermost, she did not contemplate the temporary
+absence of Ales with too much favour, anxious as she was for some news
+of Evan and of her missing money.
+
+Mr. Pryse had disorganised the work in field and house for the one day
+utterly. All was now behind-hand. She was herself upset, and a woman far
+on the wrong side of fifty does not recover her balance too readily. The
+sudden departure of Ales at this inopportune juncture was another upset.
+
+But she would not confess her weakness to Rhys, lest he should make it
+an excuse for bringing Cate to her assistance.
+
+Yesterday--Tuesday--had been baking-day. In their trouble the oven had
+been allowed to grow cool, and the dislodged terrier, who had shown a
+set of angry teeth at Mr. Pryse, had gone back to his repose underneath
+it. The barley and oatmeal for the bread lay in the brown crock, as Ales
+had left it, with the bit of last week's dough in a bowl ready to leaven
+it. Mixing, kneading, and baking was not light work, yet it must be
+done. Thoughtful Davy had again driven away the dog from his hole in the
+ash-pit, and lit the oven fire in readiness.
+
+Then it was _Wednesday_, the churning and butter-making day. How was she
+to bake and churn the same morning? for both required attention, and
+when once the long-handled dasher was set in motion, up and down it must
+go until the butter came, however long that might be, or all would be
+spoiled.
+
+Jane Edwards, persistent as her children, was at her wits' end, but she
+could not call Jonet in from the field, for they were late in digging up
+the potatoes, and if the frost came before they were in the pits, the
+whole crop would be ruined.
+
+Then dinner had to be thought of. It was a relief to her, whilst
+kneading the mass of dough, to hear Davy scrubbing away with a ling
+besom at the dinner potatoes in the stone hollow under the spring. But
+she heard the quick voice of Rhys recalling him to his field-work, and
+the passive 'I be coming,' which marked his subjection to his elder
+brother.
+
+At noon, when her family came in to dine, expecting the Wednesday's meal
+of buttermilk and potatoes--still new enough to be something of a
+treat--though there was a pleasant odour of baking bread in the kitchen,
+and there were anticipations of a dough dumpling in the pot, there were
+unmistakable grumblings and sour looks because there was only fresh milk
+to go with the esculent root. (The difference is only to be estimated by
+a trial on a farm where the buttermilk is fresh.)
+
+Jane Edwards was overtired, and lost her temper. 'You could not expect
+me to be baking and churning at the same time,' she jerked out angrily,
+feeling already warm with her morning's work.
+
+Here was the opportunity Rhys had looked for.
+
+'You had better have had Cate here this morning to churn. Then you would
+not have been so hurried, and our dinner would not have been spoiled.'
+
+'Spoiled, indeed! I have seen the time you would all have been glad of
+hot potatoes and salt, without milk at all,' was retorted.
+
+William and Davy rushed to the rescue, rightly interpreting the mother's
+frown. 'I'll stay and churn for you,' they cried in a breath.
+
+'You'll do nothing of the kind. If those potatoes are not all in, and
+covered up, they will be ruined. There was a touch of frost this
+morning. And who's to do the milking?' said autocratic Rhys.
+
+Jonet and William proffered their services, only to be rebuffed. This
+was followed by a sharp altercation between the two brothers, widening
+the existing breach, and--though William, out of consideration for his
+mother, who interposed, did not bounce off and absent himself as
+usual--it ended in the despatch of Lewis with a message to Cate, and the
+speedy arrival of the girl, as if she had expected the summons.
+
+Mrs. Edwards was taking a loaf of bread out of the oven when Cate came
+in at the open door, and possibly set the harassed widow's red face down
+to the heat of the oven--not to her temper.
+
+'Lewis do be saying you do be wanting me to churn. I shall be glad to
+help you any way, whatever,' Cate began demurely, just as if she had not
+exchanged a syllable first with Rhys over the wall by the gateway.
+
+'Yes, yes, sure. Mr. Pryse stopped the baking yesterday, and Ales be
+gone to Cardiff, so we are late; and I must have the butter ready for
+to-morrow's market.'
+
+Cate had her hat off with the first words of assent; her bare feet
+tripped lightly across the stone floor. She obtained from the pot on the
+fire a pitcher of warm water, to raise the temperature of the milk, as
+deftly as Ales could have done, and presently the dasher could be heard
+plashing in the churn with regular beat, as if lifted by strong, firm
+hands.
+
+Mrs. Edwards, washing up the dinner things, sighed heavily, as if only
+half-satisfied, for a new perplexity had arisen in debating with herself
+who should go to Caerphilly market on the morrow. Whether she went or
+Rhys, she foresaw the necessity for Cate or _some one_ to remain and
+take the place of Ales. She, however, did not care to leave the girl as
+her own deputy with Rhys at home to come and go at will.
+
+The question was still unsettled when Cate called out that the butter
+had come.
+
+At once Mrs. Edwards stepped into the dairy, and, as if ready for all
+contingencies, bare-legged Cate snatched up a milking-stool and pail,
+and was off, singing as she went; while the other collected the butter
+out of the churn, washed, salted, and moulded it into shape for market.
+
+Back she came in due time, the full pail on her head, the stool tucked
+under one arm, her knitting-pins clicking as rapidly as if she was
+unencumbered.
+
+Mrs. Edwards, moulding her butter at the dairy window, could but admit
+to herself, as she watched her cross the yard with light, firm feet,
+that Rhys might have chosen worse.
+
+That night Cate remained on the farm. It was settled that Rhys was to
+attend Caerphilly market. He was to load the pony and sled with potatoes
+for sale--they were sure to fetch a good price, if only for seed, as
+other farmers were beginning to plant them. He himself was to go on foot
+bearing the egg-and-butter basket, since Breint, who would have carried
+all, was gone.
+
+Cate was up before the lark. Milking was done, breakfast ready, and she,
+bright, brisk, and clean as a new pin by the time Rhys and the rest were
+ready for the morning meal.
+
+She was certainly on her mettle, and Rhys could barely have reached the
+bottom of the hill before the relics of the meal were cleared away,
+fresh fire-balls added to the peat on the hearth, and she ready, as she
+told Mrs. Edwards, to take the place of Ales in the field.
+
+William chuckled, and rubbed his hands together with glee, when he saw
+his mother so reinforced.
+
+He whispered to Jonet, as she followed to pick up the roots he dug out,
+and remove the haulms, which really called for another hand.
+
+Jonet nodded an affirmative.
+
+'Mother,' he cried, 'if Cate will take the spade, you can sit still and
+remove the haulms as Jonet gathers them up. I've got some work to be
+doing that Rhys will not let me undertake. He says I don't know how,
+whatever.'
+
+He had thrown down his spade, and was out of the potato-field,
+overleaping a wall, before his mother had time to question or
+remonstrate.
+
+Evan had kept his eyes here, there, and everywhere. If the troublesome
+goats butted against a wall, and displaced a stone, he repaired the
+breach at once to prevent further damage. Rhys had been less wary, and,
+in his obstinacy, would not allow his youngest brother to see or know
+more than himself.
+
+Consequently, an old greybeard Billy had been allowed to make a gap in
+the garden wall, and, though driven away with a stout broom-handle when
+Ales or her mistress might be there to see, had played havoc among the
+English herbs and flowering plants she was at such pains to rear. Then
+Mr. Billy and his friends had tried their horns on the empty sty, now
+the swine were turned to feed in the autumnal woods, and had done some
+fine damage there.
+
+If Cate handled a spade with the skill and vigour of experience, William
+handled the unhewn stones with the inspiration of genius and long
+practice 'in play.' And he worked as if his life depended on his speed
+and skill.
+
+Rhys made a good market, and came home with self-satisfied complacence
+at a late hour, to sup and turn over his gains to his mother, along with
+the news of the day. But he had no chance of a private word with Cate,
+who had gone home with her father before eight o'clock, well pleased to
+have earned the honest commendation of Mrs. Edwards, in addition to the
+customary 'payment in kind.'
+
+Morning came, noon came, and afternoon was speeding before Rhys
+discovered that the broken-down wall and pig-stye were as whole and
+sound as when new.
+
+He stood before the latter in blank surprise. He had given no orders for
+the repairs.
+
+'Has Morgan the mason been here?' he bawled out after Jonet and William,
+who were off with milking-stools and pails.
+
+'No,' came quickly back over Jonet's shoulder.
+
+'Who has been at work here?'
+
+No audible answer came back this time, but, with a wondrous twinkle in
+her expressive eyes, and an unmistakable grin on her face, Jonet pointed
+with outstretched arm, in silence, to the younger brother striding on
+well in advance.
+
+It was a revelation to Rhys. His countenance fell. The wisdom of the
+world did not rest on his individual shoulders. He stood there amazed,
+hardly sure whether to be vexed or pleased, angry or grateful. Content
+he certainly was not. He had been slyly circumvented, and that was
+irritating, however necessary the repairs had been.
+
+Into the house he strode in quest of his mother. He heard her at work
+outside. Here a fresh enlightenment awaited him. She was endeavouring to
+set her garden beds in order, behind a good firm wall. Her task was no
+longer hopeless; she could sing over her work.
+
+There was little need for Rhys to ask over again 'Who hath done this?'
+
+Still less need for frowns and sullen looks.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+DISCOVERIES.
+
+
+Robert Jones was a childless widower when he first picked up little
+William crying in the lane, and gave him a lift on his donkey. He was
+much older than Ales, but he was not too old to wish he had as smart and
+capable a helpmate on his own hearth, where was only his half-blind
+mother to keep all things fresh and clean. Many had been the sharp play
+of words between him and Ales during her progress from girl to woman,
+and, had not Evan come upon the scene when he did, Robert would
+certainly have made a bid for her favour.
+
+He was one of the first to perceive that the younger man had quite
+spoiled his chances, and was generous enough to stand on one side, and
+keep his disappointment to himself.
+
+So generous was he, that, instead of hailing Evan's mysterious
+disappearance with satisfaction, he stamped about and shook his fist at
+an imaginary 'old Pryse,' as he listened to William's recital, and
+proffered his services to 'poor Ales,' as if the recovery of her lost
+lover did not mean the extinction of the last spark of a chance for
+himself.
+
+William could not have found for Ales a better safeguard on her way, or
+a more zealous and capable assistant in her anxious quest.
+
+In fact, from the time they landed in Cardiff, and he found her a
+lodging with a dealer in peat, etc., who had her supplies from him, he
+took the business pretty well out of her hands, having, during their
+journey, made himself acquainted with Evan's errand and plans.
+
+He argued with her that a strange young woman could not go about the
+streets of a seaport town--though, apart from castle and old monastery,
+Cardiff was but a very small place in 1733--without exciting attention
+by her inquiries, and defeating her own purpose, whether Evan was
+keeping out of the way, or was kept out of the way by others, even if
+she escaped personal insult.
+
+Whereas he, well known, and with his customary load of peat to dispose
+of, could go from place to place and pick up, in gossip, without
+exciting the suspicion of Mr. Pryse, or any one else, facts which might
+be withheld from direct inquiry.
+
+And so well did he fulfil his mission that, when the last rays of the
+setting sun crimsoned the river and the fading woods of the Taff Valley
+on the Friday evening, Ales, weary and dispirited, but no longer
+ashamed, rode up the stony hillpath to the farm, on the back of good old
+Breint.
+
+Robert Jones had turned off towards his own home, with his team and his
+return load, after a very curious disclaimer of thanks.
+
+Part of that load consisted of a new turf-cutting spade and a small
+glazed window for his hut. His newly-discovered need for these took him
+among dealers in hardware and carpenters, until he found what else he
+went for. He drove hard bargains, and paid in part with winter store of
+peat; but he carried away more than the dealers supposed. In the one
+place he observed a full set of implements for husbandry put aside, and
+roughly labelled, 'Evan Evans, Castella, _Paid_,' and was told they had
+so lain, 'lumbering up the place,' for fully three weeks, the buyer not
+having turned up to claim them, although he had stated he intended to
+take them up the river by boat when the tide served.
+
+A crusty carpenter, who had two glass windows exposed for sale, was glad
+to let one of them go as a bargain, seeing that the man for whom they
+were made in a hurry three weeks before had disappeared mysteriously,
+and not even gone back to his inn, on St. Mary's Quay, for his horse.
+
+That bit of information about the inn had sent the turf-cutter tramping
+across the town with his beasts, sure, at least, of much-needed rest and
+provender, all houses of the kind, in those days of horseback travel and
+pack-horse conveyance, having ample stable accommodation.
+
+A warm supper, more plentiful than dainty, had been supplied to him in
+the common room, odorous of tobacco-smoke, rum, _cwrw_, tar, and salt
+water.
+
+Presently a voice he knew hailed him from out the smoke-reek.
+
+'Do that be you, Robert Jones? 'Deed, you're the very man to tell the
+landlord here who owns an old horse left here three weeks ago by a
+farming-man, who called himself Evan Evans, of Eglwysilan, and went off
+without paying his score, look you!'
+
+'Ah, how did he go off?'
+
+'Queerly. He said as he was going to hire a boat to carry the horse and
+some goods of his, as he was be taking to Castella, across the river in
+the morning, but he never did come back here.'
+
+'No,' chimed in the landlord, 'nor never did mean it, or he would not
+have been going off in the _Osprey's_ boat, as he surely did.'
+
+''Deed no! not if he did go of his own free will,' came from a feeble
+voice in a corner; 'but I've heard as'--
+
+'Sure, and didn't Mr. Pryse be saying he was be running off with a lot
+of money?' again struck in the landlord, drowning the words of the
+previous speaker.
+
+On this ensued a warm controversy, in which some dark hints were thrown
+out respecting the _Osprey_, and Mr. Pryse's connection therewith, all
+bearing on the strangeness of Evan's disappearance.
+
+Listening Robert Jones had come to the conclusion that the landlord was
+under Mr. Pryse's finger and thumb, and cautiously made no comment. But
+he kept his eye on the owner of the feeble voice, and, when he went out,
+followed.
+
+He had found the man shifty, timid, and unwilling to give an unspoken
+opinion to a stranger.
+
+So, too, were the tarry loungers upon the quay the next morning.
+
+'Evans _might_ have been kidnapped and carried off against his will, the
+crew of the _Osprey_ were a queer lot, look you; or he might be running
+away, as Mr. Pryse did say--they could not tell.'
+
+Mr. Pryse might have frozen free speech, but Robert Jones had noted
+shrugs and nods more expressive than words. Then the application of two
+silver pennies to the palm of a timorous lad opened his lips to tell
+that he had seen a strange man, looking for a big boat, hustled into the
+boat of the _Osprey_, and held down whilst the crew rowed out to the
+schooner in the bay. And, when Ales herself discovered that Evan had
+bought both a wedding-ring and a brooch for her, the conclusion was
+obvious.
+
+She had shed her tears in the three weeks gone. She returned to the farm
+in tearless, but gnawing, uncertainty as to her Evan's fate, yet proud
+of her ability to clear his honest name.
+
+She was somewhat incoherent in her story, but Robert Jones an hour or so
+later backed it up with fuller details, and his own convictions.
+
+'Yes, yes, indeed, Evan Evans did go about his business like an honest
+man. There be still the spades and things he paid for, and I have a
+glass window he left his God-penny[12] on. He would have kept all the
+money if he intended running away. No, no, he did be paying all the
+rent, Mrs. Edwards, whatever Mr. Pryse do say.'
+
+''Deed, it do seem like it. But why should he be "pressed" on board?'
+she queried. 'There be no war now.'
+
+'Why should any wicked deed be done?' put in Ales. 'A bad man do have
+his reasons ready.'
+
+'Yes, yes, and one evil head moves many evil hands, Mrs. Edwards,' added
+Jones, 'if, as is hinted by them as daren't speak their minds, Mr. Pryse
+do have dealings with the gruff captain of the _Osprey_ for something
+fiery besides his lordship's coal. Then, smuggling a stout-limbed fellow
+or two on board might be winked at, if it was no part of the bargain.
+And I do be telling Ales not to think they would kill Evan. They want
+living men for sailors, not dead ones.'
+
+'Then God may bring him back to me some time, and I will pray day and
+night for him. Yes, yes, though the day be long it will have an evening.
+And let not Mr. Pryse be thinking to escape--
+
+
+     "The later that God's vengeance is,
+     The heavier far and sorer 'tis,"'
+
+
+broke from Ales, her eyes and cheeks kindling as with a spirit of
+prophecy, as she hurried from the kitchen into the dark storeroom beyond
+to contend with her own agony in secret.
+
+Then came a reckoning with Jones for Breint's keep at the inn (Ales had
+cleared Evan's score as a matter of honour), and whilst settling that
+with Mrs. Edwards, it occurred to him that her sons had pursued their
+occupations in uncommon silence during this statement of facts and
+fancies, especially Rhys, who seemed more interested in disentangling
+the locks of wool he was combing by the fireside (his comb-pot on the
+hearth) than on disentangling what seemed an unaccountable plot against
+his mother's tried and faithful servant.
+
+William, knitting a long blue stocking in the opposite corner, had put
+in an occasional word, but even he did not appear at ease.
+
+Davy's wooden soles had been heard clattering outside along with sounds
+indicative of more care for recovered Breint than the absent Evan.
+
+He walked in from the farmyard just in time for the supper of hot
+leek-porridge Jonet poured scalding hot into their bowls, not forgetting
+one for the turf-cutter, who sat down without apology, for the odour was
+appetising.
+
+Again he noticed that Rhys and William preserved a sullen silence
+towards each other, and wondered what fresh quarrel there had been.
+
+When supper was over, and he rose to depart, William followed him.
+
+No sooner were they out of earshot than the boy began to lay bare his
+grievance in tones of wounded self-esteem.
+
+'Look you,' said he, 'since Evan went, Old Billy has been suffered to
+butt at the walls, and never a stone had been put back to keep him from
+the styes, till they did be like to tumble down. So yesterday, while
+Rhys was at market, I did work till the sweat poured off me, and mended
+them all, thinking I would let Rhys see what I could do. And since he
+found out this afternoon what I had been doing, he has never spoken one
+word to me, whatever. If I had knocked the walls down he could not have
+looked more surly. It's enough to make one run away, it is! And if it
+was not for mother and Jonet, I would be running away, 'deed I would.'
+
+'Hush, Willem, don't be saying that; runaway sons make sorrowful
+mothers. Don't be thinking of doing anything rash, anything you cannot
+be asking the blessing of Almighty God upon. Perhaps you neglected
+something Rhys expected done, of more consequence than a dry wall.'
+
+'Sure, Cate Griffith did be digging the potatoes. She could not build up
+walls. I do believe Rhys is vexed just because mother was so well
+pleased, and began to put her garden right that Billy and the pigs had
+spoiled. Rhys would have liked Evan better if mother had found fault
+with him.'
+
+The boy's bitter attempt at self-justification was checked by his mature
+friend.
+
+'Faults are thick where love is thin, Willem. You are only a boy and
+your brother is a man. It is not for you to go your own way and disobey
+wilfully. But I will look at your handiwork in the morning, when I bring
+the lime for the land; and, perhaps, be saying a word to bring Rhys to
+reason. Good-night, Willem. Go to bed peacefully. And don't be building
+up a wall of stony thoughts against your brother, don't.'
+
+These were his parting words to the chafing lad, as they stood by the
+gateway, but, as he descended the hill in the full light of the moon, he
+said to himself, 'Better repair a breach between brothers than build up
+a wall to repel a fancied enemy.'
+
+It was in this spirit the man addressed himself to Rhys the next
+morning, whilst helping Lewis to transfer the lime from the panniers to
+the freshly-dug potato ground, and the unturned stubble of oats and
+barley. He said he had observed signs of discontent between the brothers
+the previous night, and on other occasions, and expressed a desire to
+know if any real cause for discord existed. It was so very serious a
+thing for brothers in one house to bicker and quarrel; small differences
+were so liable to grow into great ones, even to enmity and hatred.
+
+Rhys listened uneasily, fidgeted, puckered his brows, and at last jerked
+out, 'Look you, Robert Jones, that boy Willem is the plague of my life.
+He will not take orders from me. And who else should give orders if I am
+to manage the farm? Davy and Jonet obey. But he do think of nothing but
+picking up stones and building; and that will not make a good farmer or
+till the land, or pay the rent. He was mending walls on Thursday when he
+should have been digging potatoes. We may thank Cate Griffith they were
+all up and safe from last night's frost. She took up the spade he threw
+down.'
+
+'Ah, well, Rhys, all the world are not farmers. Cate's father is a
+weaver. I cut turf, and sell lime and culm and aught else, to turn an
+honest penny. But let me see what sort of a young builder you have on
+the farm. You know I do be going about the country and use my eyes, so I
+know good walls from bad ones.'
+
+'Sure, they do be well enough for a boy's work,' half contemptuously
+admitted Rhys, whilst pointing out the repairs in walls and sties.
+
+Jones gave them more than a cursory examination.
+
+'Yes, yes, Rhys. But they do be "well enough" for a _man's_ work, that
+they do. The stones are well fitted and firm. You owe the boy thanks,
+not blame. Don't you be for thwarting Willem, or you may be spoiling a
+good builder to make a poor farmer. A sound fence is a farmer's friend.
+Let him keep your fences sound, and he will help to pay the rent, 'deed
+he will.'
+
+'I don't see how.'
+
+'Your eyes are blinded by prejudice, man. Would not a stray cow, or hog,
+or pony that found a gap ready, do more damage to crops in a day than
+you could repair in a month?'
+
+This was not to be gainsaid. But when the turf-cutter urged William's
+claim to just consideration and recognition of his service, the pride of
+Rhys was up in alarm for his own authority.
+
+'He is such a boy,' he argued.
+
+'No more a boy than you were, Rhys, when you first tried to fill your
+dead father's place, and told your mother you were "old enough to do
+your duty." Have you forgotten that? Or are you _younger_ than you were
+then?'
+
+Whether he had forgotten, or did not choose to remember, he turned off
+with a light laugh, and the remark, 'I'm not doing my duty in idling
+here.'
+
+But conscience is a mill that grinds at all hours, and unsought, and
+Robert Jones had set the wheels in motion.
+
+'Willem,' said the peat-cutter to the depressed boy, just before he
+cracked his whip to set his unloaded team in motion downhill, 'if you
+build up your life as well as you have built up your garden wall, you'll
+do. It is firm and compact, and the stones are set evenly together. But
+strife between brothers is a bad foundation to build upon. And it is not
+for a lad of your age to be unruly, and oppose the brother who has so
+long been working for all of you. There is time enough before you to
+build walls or churches, or what you will; but you have none to lose if
+you would bind the bond of brotherhood around you, or lay the foundation
+of a Christian life, look you.'
+
+William's eyes brightened, and his chest expanded under his Saturday's
+sullied smock-frock, as his early friend commended his handiwork, for
+
+
+     'Praise is pleasanter than honey,'
+
+
+and hitherto he had not been cloyed with the sweetmeat. But his aspect
+changed. He did not relish the bitter dose of advice mingled with the
+honey, for his whole soul was in rebellion.
+
+Yet, swift and sharp as the man's whip crack, memory brought back those
+other words to the same purport the stranger, Mr. Morris, had spoken
+long ago, and every hoof-beat of mule or ass seemed to hammer them into
+his brain.
+
+Far down the steep hill were beasts and driver before William roused
+from his reverie, and rushed after them, shouting as he went. The man
+turned.
+
+'What is it, Willem?'
+
+'Can you teach me to count?'
+
+'Yes, up to a hundred, in tens. That is the way I count my peat.'
+
+'Oh, I can be counting that as I knit.'
+
+'Ah, then, if you do be wanting to reckon properly, and do sums with
+figures, you had better be asking Owen Griffith; he do be clever at
+that. I will speak to him for you.'
+
+''Deed, I would be so glad.'
+
+Robert Jones was as good as his word. Owen's cottage was not on his
+direct road, but he did not mind going out of his way to do a kindness.
+
+The weaver had just taken a finished web of blue flannel out of his
+loom, and sat smoking a long pipe on the bench outside.
+
+After the first salutation, the turf-cutter began by saying, 'Have you
+seen the dry wall Willem Edwards have been building up so cleverly?'
+
+'Sure to goodness, no. Yet he did always have a notion that way. I have
+heard Rhys and Cate be laughing over it many a time.'
+
+''Deed, yes, Owen, but it's not to be laughed at. That boy have a head,
+look you. I've seen walls built and mended less securely by old hands
+before now.'
+
+'Sure now! You don't say so? I wish he would come and repair mine. It's
+been tumbling down, stone by stone, waiting till Morgan the mason did be
+coming round.'
+
+'Well, you ask Willem. And if you would be offering to teach him to
+reckon up with figures, he would be proud and pleased to build it up.
+'Deed he would. He do just be asking me to teach him. But you go looking
+at that wall of his. Willem do want encouraging, not laughing at. He
+will build up more than a broken-down wall some day.--Shall you be
+wanting peat or lime next week?'
+
+'Ah, yes; and if you think Willem can mend the wall you can bring a sled
+of stones as well.'
+
+The next day, on the way from church, Owen Griffith got William by his
+side, and set him counting the trees by the wayside, and the sheep on
+the hills, as preliminary to lessons in arithmetic, but nothing said he
+of any broken walls.
+
+He left that for the afternoon, when he and Cate walked up to the farm,
+ostensibly to learn what news Ales had brought from Cardiff.
+
+Over all that he shook his head, uncertain what to make of it, though he
+said, 'It do look bad, it do.'
+
+But there was nothing uncertain in his exclamation of surprise at the
+firmly repaired walls Mrs. Edwards showed so proudly as the work of her
+youngest son.
+
+It led to the open proposal that William should restore his fences to
+condition in return for lessons in arithmetic, and to Mrs. Edwards'
+consent to that use of his time.
+
+Rhys had strolled away with Cate to talk over the deferred prospect of
+their marriage, and so did not hear of this arrangement until
+afterwards, when, for reasons of his own, he thought best to keep the
+peace.
+
+It was the small beginning of greater things.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[12] God-penny--a deposit.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+PROPER TOOLS.
+
+
+Ales had resumed her work on the farm, but not with the spirit and
+vivacity of old. She had been wont to sing over her work, and had a
+store of old Welsh ballads in her memory. But the song-bird mourned in
+silence for the mate torn away so ruthlessly, and, as weeks and months
+and years rolled on in the same drear monotony of hopelessness, her
+heart grew colder and heavier, and her prayers became as the very
+wailings of despair.
+
+It cut her to the soul to hear Rhys grumbling, as he did, at the money
+filched from them to pay, not only the rent Evan should have paid, but
+the heavy costs of a seizure in addition; and she more than once
+resolved to quit the farm when the year expired.
+
+Second thoughts, however, suggested that nothing would suit the young
+man better, and his very grumbling might have that end in view; for,
+once rid of her, he could seek the necessary consent to bring in a wife
+with a good grace.
+
+He had not improved in temper, certainly. It had irritated him to hear
+William lauded for the very proclivities he had held of so small
+account, nay, turned into ridicule.
+
+It was no satisfaction to have a brother so much younger competent to
+enlarge and raise the walls of the sheepfold, as he did, before a second
+winter set in. What though a mason's charges were saved, was not the
+saving at the greater cost of his own supremacy?
+
+And in the long winter nights when he and Davy sorted fleeces or combed
+the wool, or tended the dye-pot on the fire; when Ales taught Jonet to
+twirl the flaxen thread drawn from the distaff, so as to set the spindle
+dancing on the floor to the tune of the mother's industrious
+spinning-wheel, how it tried his patience to see William making figures
+and calculations on a board, with chalk or ruddle by the light of the
+candle, whilst the knitting-pins, which should have been earning money,
+lay idle by his side.
+
+There are men ready to perform generous acts, who are flagrantly unjust,
+but cannot see it. Robert Jones had urged Rhys Edwards to 'be just.' He
+should have said 'be generous,' and Rhys might have responded to the
+appeal. He resented the imputation of injustice.
+
+Yet he denied to his brother the meed of praise his service merited; he
+begrudged him the time to acquire the common rules of simple arithmetic;
+perhaps because he felt it was a step to something beyond his own
+attainment. He counted not the money saved in masonry as money earned.
+He might have been content had William been as passively submissive as
+Davy and Jonet, but he found in him a spirit boldly daring to cope with
+his own, and it stung him to find the boy upheld in his resistance.
+
+So years crept on. The third winter passed, the snows melted, the roads
+were free for traffic, the river sang a paean to approaching spring, the
+pink and brown buds were bursting into green, song birds were flitting
+and fluttering about the eaves and boughs, all was life and activity
+upon the farm. The _Osprey_ had never again put into port at Cardiff,
+where Mr. Pryse bit his nails and snarled more cantankerously than ever,
+and nothing had been heard of Evan. Ales lost heart, she did not sing
+with the birds; but William, no longer snubbed, worked on the farm with
+the best, until another barrier rose between himself and Rhys, in the
+shape of another stone wall.
+
+Hedges have now superseded walls in many parts of Glamorganshire; but at
+the date of this narrative, the fields and lanes were universally
+bounded by what are known as '_dry walls_,' and still they serve as
+fences on the uplands.
+
+By 'dry walls' are to be understood walls built without mortar or
+cement, of irregular, unhewn flagstones, so put together, so wedged in
+one with another, as to stand firm where a cemented wall might give way
+exposed to the high winds of those elevated regions, the very crevices
+allowing the blasts to pass through, and so reduce the pressure on the
+mass. Such are the walls in Craven and other parts of northern England.
+
+Yet it is no uncommon thing for the coping-stones to be hurled away in
+a fierce gale, or for large portions of such walls to be blown down, as
+came to pass on Brookside Farm that gusty spring.
+
+Here was an opportunity for William to turn his talent to account and
+save his mother's pocket, as be sure he did.
+
+So far, so good. Rhys made no objection, and Mrs. Edwards was well
+pleased. Davy had begun to feel proud of his brother.
+
+But it so happened that Robert Jones, whose window had long before been
+fitted in by William, came to seek his services, not merely to repair a
+breach, but to enclose a portion of ground as a stone yard.
+
+Rhys, then engaged sowing barley on last year's turnip ground, looked as
+black as two thunder-clouds rolled into one, and without mincing his
+words gave a decided refusal.
+
+'Willem is not a public stonemason, Robert Jones. He is now dibbling in
+the potato-sets, and cannot be spared. You asked me to "be just"; do you
+think you are just in seeking to draw him away from the farm at this
+busy season?' and with a very strong oath he swore 'Willem should _not_
+build walls for him or any one else.'
+
+But the leader of the peat-cutter's team happened to carry a resonant
+bell, as did the leading beast of all packhorse teams, in order to warn
+other teamsters, or the drivers of cattle or carriages, that the narrow
+roadway was blocked, and one or the other must wait in the nearest
+broadened space provided as a refuge until the advancing team had
+passed and left the road clear. Such open grassy spots may still be seen
+in England's narrow by-ways, and there gipsies make their camps. Nay,
+even in the heart of busy London, old Paternoster Row is so provided
+with spaces where two carts may pass abreast.
+
+The bell, set ringing through the clear March air with every motion of
+the mule's head, brought William leaping over runnel, ridge and furrow,
+and dividing fence to greet his old and true friend.
+
+The voice of Rhys, ever loud and authoritative, now raised and vehement,
+reached William as he came bounding along.
+
+'Who says I shall not build walls for any one?' he cried. 'I _will_, and
+no one here shall stop me. Do you think I mean to dig and delve all my
+life, and be labourer to you?'
+
+'Labourer to me, you jackanapes? Do you think your intermittent labour
+pays for your sustenance? But if you quit the farm this day to go
+wall-building, you may quit it altogether. I am not going to wear my
+life away to support you in idleness. Cyphering at night, piling up
+stones by day, rambling off to Caerphilly Castle when you should be at
+work--what sort of labour do you call that?'
+
+'Head-work; of no account with you. But, look you, I'll go and come as I
+please, and build walls if I please. And I don't be owning you for
+master. If we can but find the old lease, it may turn out the youngest
+son is heir and not the eldest. But let me tell you that for the toss
+up of a silver penny I'd quit the farm for ever, only I know that's what
+you do be wanting. You would be glad to get either me or Ales out to
+make room for Cate. But while we stay, mother do be mistress, and shall
+be.'
+
+For a moment Rhys seemed dumbfounded. Then he sprang upon his brother,
+and grappled with him as if he would have borne him to the earth.
+
+The fifteen years lad was thick set and sturdy, and stood his ground
+well, but he was no match for the man of more toughened frame and
+indurated muscle.
+
+It would have gone badly with the younger had not the turf-cutter
+interposed, and, by sheer force, thrust them apart.
+
+'What!' cried he, 'are you two brothers so jealous of each other you
+would strive like Cain and Abel? Shame on you both! Would you bring
+death and sorrow on your mother's hearth once more?'
+
+They stood panting, but abashed, as he proceeded--
+
+'Surely, what with one loss after another--the rent money unaccounted
+for when Evan disappeared, the cruel bill for costs, the raising of the
+rent, the missing lease--the poor widow do be passing through a sea of
+trouble, with cares enough to drown her, without you two, who should be
+her help and comfort, adding to the load. Are you not ashamed?'
+
+'It be Rhys' fault!' 'It be Willem's fault!' they cried simultaneously,
+alike moved by the reference to their mother, whom they loved with deep
+affection.
+
+'You are alike to blame. Each one has some reason on his side; but, let
+me tell you, lads, it is always the one most in the wrong who is the
+last to give in. Now, shake hands and be friends. I came here thinking
+to be doing you all a service, for it would pay better for Willem to be
+building walls than doing common field-work. But I don't be wanting to
+breed dissension between you, so I will be getting Morgan the stonemason
+to build my wall.'
+
+William's lips were set close.
+
+The brothers looked at each other; Rhys wavered. The reference to
+'better pay' had struck a vibrating chord in his breast.
+
+'If'--he began.
+
+'_I_ will build your wall, look you, pay or no pay, Robert Jones. But
+you will not be wanting me to-day, whatever?'
+
+'No, not until next week; but fair work must have fair pay. Yet, what
+say you, Rhys?'
+
+Here was a loophole for Rhys to slip through. 'Oh, indeed, if you don't
+be wanting to call him off his work to-day or to-morrow, it may be
+managed.'
+
+So it was amicably settled, and when the turf-cutter went his way,
+William was on his knees helping Rhys to gather up what he could of the
+barley spilled from his seed-wallet during their unbrotherly struggle.
+
+It so happened that the following Sunday the vicar took for his text, 2
+Peter i. 5, 6, and 7, dwelling especially on the last--'_And to
+godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity_'--in
+such manner that both Rhys and William took it to heart, imagining he
+had heard of their antagonism, and was addressing his sermon especially
+to them. No doubt there were others in the congregation to whom the
+sermon might apply with equal force, but they two held their heads down,
+as if to hide the crimson flush that mounted to the roots of their brown
+hair, and fidgeted uneasily upon their high-backed seat.
+
+Anyway that was the end of their open strife. And when, at the close of
+another week, William carried home to his mother, in good hard coin,
+more than double the hire of a field-labourer, reserving a very small
+portion for himself, there was nothing said by way of objection to his
+craze for building, or his efforts to attain a more complete knowledge
+of arithmetical calculation.
+
+Few persons ever found their way to Brookside Farm except on business,
+fewer still cared to ask who kept the fences and outhouses in such good
+order; and though Owen Griffith's house was by the roadside, ordinary
+passers-by were not likely to stop and put such questions, even if they
+gave the walls a second glance.
+
+But Robert Jones had become a thriving man of business. He had increased
+the number of his team, and still travelled the country round with culm
+and peat, and clay and lime. There was scarcely a farmer or cottager on
+all Eglwysilan mountain, or near it, who did not on occasion call at his
+place, either to carry away some of his necessary commodities, or to
+leave a special order. And these were the very men to whom fences were
+of importance, the very men to know a good, compact wall when they saw
+it.
+
+Jones had a long head. He had a double motive when he began to deal in
+broken flagstone, and invited William Edwards to build up an enclosing
+wall for his stores. He knew the wall would attract attention, bring the
+self-taught young mason into notice, and help to sell his stone.
+
+The event justified his far-seeing calculations. Before another spring
+brought William's sixteenth birthday, he was known to be the best
+builder of dry walls within a wide area, and his services were in
+frequent request.
+
+There was no more snubbing under his mother's roof, for with a very
+small reserve for personal needs, he poured all his earnings into her
+lap as to a common store; and rising in estimation, he was thanked with
+heartfelt satisfaction, so material and so necessary were added gains to
+meet increased demands, extortionate Mr. Pryse, sneering and grinning at
+their inability to confront him with their lease, having raised the rent
+a second time, and threatened still harsher measures.
+
+And no one now lent a more willing hand to any work upon the farm, when
+not otherwise employed, than thoughtful William, who saw with pain the
+streaks of white interlacing his mother's once black hair.
+
+But William Edwards was not content to be a mere builder of dry walls.
+He looked at the masonry of the church and of Caerphilly Castle, and was
+conscious he had much to learn. How to enlarge his fund of knowledge was
+a problem. But he was not easily daunted.
+
+One Sunday he observed a cow and sundry sheep trespassing on the
+vicar's glebe, having taken a wide gap in the wall as an invitation. No
+sooner was service concluded than he marched up boldly to the vicar,
+reminded him of promised help, explained his desire to master higher
+forms of arithmetic than Owen Griffith had ability to teach, and
+modestly offered to repair the glebe wall if the vicar would accept his
+services. The Rev. John Smith smiled, and assented readily. William set
+to work upon the wall the next day, going into the vicarage parlour when
+candles were lighted, and making the best use of the privilege accorded.
+Long after the wall shut out four-footed intruders, William might be
+seen on his way to the vicarage, after a hard day's work, once or twice
+a week, a bit of candle stuck in a hollowed turnip serving to light him
+home when there was no moon.
+
+It was about this time a gleam of stronger light shone on his darkness.
+
+He was engaged enclosing a fresh field for a farmer about two miles from
+Caerphilly. Raising his head, and giving his arms a stretch, his
+attention was arrested by a noise there was no mistaking. There was a
+blacksmith's shop by the roadside, and almost in front of it a load of
+stones was being dumped down from a cart, or what then answered to the
+name in that wild region. It was little more than a sled, low to the
+ground, but running on broad wheels or rollers of solid wood, girthed
+with iron bands and drawn by four horses.
+
+His curiosity was excited. A group of working men were there. What were
+they about to do? One man was measuring the ground, the others, doffing
+their coats, rolled up their shirt sleeves, and also set to work.
+
+A trench was dug along the lines marked out. And now two mules came up
+with laden panniers. William overleapt his own low wall and drew nearer
+to observe, his pulses beating rapidly. He was coming on the secret he
+had so long panted to learn.
+
+A heap of sand was emptied on the ground, and hollowed out like a huge
+shallow bowl. Into this was poured lime from the other panniers, and
+then a man carrying a pail brought water from a wayside runnel and
+poured it on the lime. There was no need to tell whence rose that volume
+of steam to one who whitewashed his mother's farm buildings so
+repeatedly. But the stirring up and mixing of mortar was new to him. And
+what was that soft fluff shaken out of a bag when the steam began to
+subside? It was something with which the wind made free and blew about
+almost like thistle-down--ay, almost into his own face. He caught a
+loosened tuft; examined it. It could be nothing but cow's hair. So that
+was how the mortar was bound together!
+
+Anon began a chipping and ringing of steel upon stone, that was, and was
+not, new to him.
+
+Nearer and nearer he drew, yet afraid of exciting observation. He knew
+his own purpose, and felt as if the busy masons would know it too, and
+drive him away before his object was attained.
+
+He watched the mason chip and dress the stones to shape until the one
+fitted its fellows, and they were laid side by side in a bed of mortar
+within the trench, and fresh mortar spread on these with a trowel to
+receive a second layer of stones for the foundation.
+
+Then he went back to his own dry-wall building. But never had wall taken
+him so long before, for day by day he watched the masons at their work,
+and day by day learned something fresh--even the uses of square and
+plummet--until a well-built farrier's shed adjoined the blacksmith's
+forge, with smoothly-rounded pillars bearing up the roof.
+
+He had learned the secret of the masons' tools, primarily the hammer,
+with which the stones were chipped and dressed. Unlike his own, it was
+steeled at _both_ ends, one end shaped like an axe.
+
+From a smith in Caerphilly he obtained just such another before the week
+was out.
+
+Brief apprenticeship! No premium paid! No years of servitude to a
+master! God had gifted him with peculiar faculties. He had a special
+bias; he had also intelligence, perseverance, and determination to
+succeed. He had achieved so far a measure of success.
+
+He began to speculate on success he could not measure.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+IN THE GRIP OF A STRONG HAND.
+
+
+Five years had come and gone since that sad October when Evan Evans rode
+away from Brookside Farm buoyant with hope and expectation, yet from
+that hour no word or sign of his existence, no token of his death, had
+come to set feverish doubt at rest.
+
+They had been five worrying and wearying years. For although William
+brought home his larger earnings to the common store, and his brothers
+did their best upon the farm, and there had been none but ordinary
+losses, the abstracted money had never been replaced. Mr. Pryse had
+prevented that with his extortionate raising of the rent. Then he had
+taken to visiting the farm at intervals, making free comments with
+sarcastic flings at Rhys, and cutting allusions to the still-missing
+Evans, and to the missing lease, which he insisted the man must have
+carried off, if it ever existed.
+
+Ales had much to bear through it all. Every doubtful or stinging
+allusion to Evan cut her like a knife. But deep in her heart, as in a
+well of truth and faith, she cherished a belief that in God's good time
+he would come back to comfort her, and confound his traducers. And so
+year after year she kept her place in spite of the black looks of Rhys
+and Cate.
+
+Robert Jones would gladly have made another home for her. But Ales only
+shook her head, and said with a heavy sigh: 'What would I do if Evan
+came back? No, better remain for ever unmarried than for ever marred.'
+And finding her constancy unshaken, the man brought an orphan niece into
+his cottage to care for himself and his mother, a tacit confession that
+his suit was hopeless.
+
+Some such proverbial answer Mrs. Edwards gave to Rhys about this time
+when he urged how much better it would be to have Cate always at hand as
+his wife, than to be paying for her frequent services, when William was
+away wall-building, as was often the case. 'Besides, mother, you cannot
+be expecting to keep Jonet always at home,' said he. 'Thomas Williams is
+beginning to talk to her, and it is clear he do be thinking of taking a
+wife, and he five years younger than myself, look you.'
+
+'It will take a long while thinking, if he do be thinking of Jonet for a
+wife, and him not even got his workshop built,' replied the mother with
+decision. 'Your patience will hardly hold out till Jonet makes way for
+Cate. But, indeed, there do be no room here for a wife. And Cate must
+know it.'
+
+'We might make room, if you were willing,' he persisted. 'We need only
+be clearing out the fleeces, pots, pans, and other lumber, and shut in
+the place at the back with a bit of wall and a door, and there will be a
+room as big as the dairy.'
+
+'Indeed, and where would you be for putting what you call "lumber"?'
+
+Rhys hesitated, pushed his fingers through his loose brown hair two or
+three times, as if to rake up an idea. What he called lumber were
+household goods and utensils in common request, fire-balls and turf
+included.
+
+'Oh, sure, I can be talking to Willem about that;' and he strode away,
+with bent brows, leaving his mother to finish her whitewashing of the
+cottage front, and to digest his suggestion at leisure.
+
+The Thomas Williams to whom Rhys had referred was the second son of the
+carpenter who had laughed in his sleeve at Mrs. Edwards' new notion of
+housing and scrubbing her swine, but who had ceased to laugh at
+improvements that had brought him in work all round. In fact, he had
+enclosed his workshop and glazed his small windows, not to be behind his
+precocious son.
+
+That son, Thomas Williams, was fully five years older than William
+Edwards, but the two had been drawn together from the fact that both
+indulged in original ideas, and smarted under a want of appreciation at
+home.
+
+Thus it happened that when Rhys gave his mother a hint that Thomas
+Williams was making up to Jonet, his own brother was engaged in rearing
+a workshop for the young carpenter in close proximity to the premises of
+Robert Jones in the Aber Valley. At home he had been told he was too
+young to set up for himself, but he had served his seven years'
+apprenticeship to his father, had saved a little money, and was not so
+young as the self-taught mason, who was making _his_ first experiment
+in house-building for him.
+
+On his father's hearth he was scoffed at for trusting so much as the
+raising of a workshop to the untried hands of a mere boy. So of his
+plans or his ulterior intentions he said little there, desirous to
+escape inevitable sneers and discouragement.
+
+It was at Brookside Farm by the fireside after dark, the two young
+fellows had laid their heads together, and matured their plans, long
+before they were put into operation, and it was there the original idea
+of a workshop and living-room behind developed into something more.
+
+It was there, night after night, whilst Rhys was down the hill at the
+weaver's, that Thomas Williams had unsuspected opportunities for seeing
+Jonet's fitness for wifehood. True, he had noticed her bright black eyes
+and hair, her clear complexion and pleasing smile, her neat attire and
+dapper figure, times out of mind on Sundays, and had thought how lithe
+and supple were her movements, how modest her demeanour. But it was on
+her mother's hearth, whether knitting, or spinning from her distaff,
+chatting all the while with one or other, and making much of her
+brothers, or when helping Ales to prepare supper, that he saw how ready
+she was to make herself useful and agreeable as well.
+
+So it was that, out of the first design for a mere workshop, gradually a
+plan for the construction of a whole house shaped itself.
+
+William Edwards was short and sturdy; his round face had become square,
+his forehead broad, his jaw inclined to be massive; his keen grey eyes
+were deep set and thoughtful, his nose was large with broad nostrils,
+his dark brown hair crisp as a crown--at seventeen a premature man of
+thought and action, with strong, capable hands.
+
+He was a thorough contrast to his friend, who was tall and slight, had a
+fair clear skin, with a tinge of healthy colour in his cheeks, and a
+crop of wavy auburn hair; in short, a handsome young fellow.
+
+Handsome enough to attract Jonet, and more than Jonet; but not to lead
+Mrs. Edwards to countenance too much intimacy until assured that neither
+her son nor his friend had miscalculated his skill or its results.
+
+Certainly William Edwards had not.
+
+Passers-by, or people having business with the turf-cutter, lingered to
+watch the young mason at his work, as the walls gradually rose above the
+foundations, until firm, even, and compact as if laid by a master-hand,
+with a couple of rooms in the rear and an undivided attic over all, the
+whole stood fair to view. But even before Thomas Williams had laid the
+last rafter, or the thatched roof was on, or the casements were glazed,
+the owner might be seen at his bench plying plane or saw to make the
+whole substantial and complete.
+
+The situation had been well selected. Proximity to Robert Jones'
+premises was as good as a modern advertisement to both young builders.
+Then it was on the main road to church, and was certain to arrest
+attention and inquiry.
+
+Rhys stood before it the Sunday after completion, along with Cate and
+her father, feeling something like pride in his self-taught brother for
+the first time. He had taken a critical survey of all, back and front,
+when he heard Robert Jones calling out to him from his own low doorway--
+
+'Look you there now! What do you think of that? Didn't I be telling you
+not to spoil a good builder to make a bad farmer?'
+
+'Indeed you did, and I think you were right. But where he did be
+learning it all does be puzzling me.'
+
+'Ah, well, you wait and see. The little one will be the big one in the
+end.'
+
+The rest of the family had come up, Mrs. Edwards between William and
+Davy, Jonet having dropped behind with handsome Thomas Williams.
+
+Congratulations came thick and fast, even from strange voices.
+
+Rhys grasped his brother by the hand, and pressed it warmly.
+
+'I did never be thinking you could do this, Willem, whatever. I do be
+pleased and proud to see it.'
+
+''Deed, I did be knowing it long ago, and so did Robert Jones,' put in
+Owen Griffith.
+
+'I wish I had known it. But where did you be learning to build like
+_this_?' asked Rhys, who held his dry walls of small account.
+
+'Sure, and I did be studying at Caerphilly Castle, where you did be
+thinking me idling. Grand masonry does be there!' replied William.
+
+Mrs. Edwards' eyes were swimming with tears. She saw a future before her
+son, and silently she thanked God.
+
+'Will you like to be looking inside?' said the owner, who had unfastened
+the door and held it open whilst Mrs. Edwards and Jonet walked in.
+
+The floor of the front shop was already thickly carpeted with curly
+shavings, and crowded with odd pieces of oak and pine shaped and trimmed
+ready to put together, a rush basket of tools was set upon the workman's
+bench under the window, pieces of timber were reared against the bare
+walls, and there was already an air of business about the place.
+
+'It is all rough and bare at present,' said Thomas Williams
+apologetically. 'When the walls do be dry enough to whitewash, and
+these'--pointing to the incongruous pile upon the floor--'are made into
+stout seats and tables, and my tools do be set in order, as well as the
+house, you must be coming to look again, and rest on your way from
+church.'
+
+'No one will be more welcome, whatever,' he added with emphasis, and a
+covert glance at Jonet, who had her feet on a flight of narrow stone
+steps leading up aloft. Presently she came down in surprise.
+
+'Why, mother, look you; there is a big room overhead. What do that be
+for?'
+
+Thomas flushed.
+
+''Deed, William said it was best make the house complete at first, and
+show what we could do. Until it be wanted it will serve to keep my best
+timber dry and safe.'
+
+'But you do not be noticing how solid and substantial are the walls.'
+This to Mrs. Edwards.
+
+'Yes, yes, sure I do! And I pray God to prosper the work of both your
+hands.'
+
+'Amen!' came with fervour from both young fellows, and had a loud echo
+from the peat-cutter in the rear.
+
+There were not lacking turned-up noses or sneering comments on the
+presumption of two untried beginners setting out so pretentiously; but
+to them the substantial building with its two floors was as a modern
+manufacturer's pattern-card, and brought commissions to one or both.
+
+And it frequently happened that the two were engaged to work together,
+certainly whenever Robert Jones had a chance to put in a word.
+
+Long before Thomas Williams had his house set in order, or its wooden
+fittings complete, the vicar paid him a visit of inspection, and with
+him a gentleman he addressed as Mr. Morris. And a very close inspection
+the latter made, sounding and measuring the walls and trying the cement.
+
+'Good workmanship--extremely good workmanship,' said he; 'but I expected
+no other from the boy. I shall recommend him.'
+
+His opinion or his recommendation must have been worth something, for,
+very shortly, William Edwards was called upon to erect another
+two-floored house of even larger dimensions, nearer to Caerphilly and to
+the farrier's shed where he had graduated in masonry.
+
+Previously to that, as they walked home, arm in arm together, after that
+Sunday view of the new workshop, Rhys had laid before him the latest
+impediment their mother had thrown in the way of his marriage. It was
+something new for him to take counsel with William.
+
+'Ah, well, Rhys,' assented he, 'mother do be something unreasonable. She
+do be worse than Laban, for you have been after Cate longer than Jacob's
+whole service, and you have been a dutiful son to wait so long. I will
+soon be making a room for you somewhere--sure I will.'
+
+Leaving Rhys at the foot of the hill, he turned back to help his mother
+up the steep ascent, she having walked to church.
+
+Finding her in the best of good humours, he advocated his brother's
+cause so successfully that, by the time they were at the top, he had her
+consent to build an additional room at the chimney-end of the house,
+agreeing that, if the room were ready, the marriage might take place at
+Hollantide, or earlier, if all the crops were harvested and housed.
+
+'Ready, and May still blossoming?' William laughed as he collected his
+materials, and cleared sufficient ground, it seemed such a small affair.
+But before he had his wall two feet high came the unexpected commission
+for a two-storeyed house, also required in a given time, and put a stop
+to his brotherly arrangement.
+
+It was a proud moment for the young builder, though Rhys looked blank,
+and all was not clear before himself.
+
+'Never mind, Rhys,' said he; 'your place shall be ready in time. I wish
+I was as sure of the money to carry on the other work. I mean to manage
+it, but I do not like to be asking mother for my money back again.
+Jones has offered to find the stone, and wait for payment, and Williams
+the woodwork; but there will be labourers' wages, and other things. I
+must think it out.'
+
+He had not occasion to waste much time on 'thinks.' Mother and brothers
+agreed that the bulk of his contributions to the general purse should be
+regarded as a reserve fund for his use, nothing doubting it would be
+mutually advantageous.
+
+So his new undertaking was planned out, begun, and carried to a
+successful issue, to the joint profit of himself and friends, and the
+satisfaction of his employer. Not, however, without one or two hitches,
+and a considerable expenditure of thought, for he was at once architect
+and builder; and surely never one so young and self-taught before. But I
+am telling fact and not fable.
+
+In those days, if people worked long hours, it was not at express speed.
+There was no 'scamping,' for durability was a desideratum.
+
+It was therefore late in September before William could spare time to
+add another stone to the wall at Brookside, and even then he had to lend
+a hand in the harvest-field.
+
+He had, however, passed his word to Rhys, and there was no fear that he
+would break it. His promise meant performance, by hook or by crook.
+
+Besides, it was no great matter, and very soon Thomas Williams had the
+joists and other woodwork ready on the ground, and was fitting in the
+framework of the doorway, for the young mason, mounted on a plank raised
+upon sods, was adjusting the crowning stones of the new gable with an
+aspect of self-content.
+
+It was close upon the dinner-hour, and Cate, as impatient as Rhys, had
+hurried to the front of the house along with Jonet to note progress, and
+clapped her hands in glee to find the masonry so near completion.
+
+At that juncture William cast his eyes downhill. A sharp 'Ugh!'
+indicative of annoyance burst from him. 'Here do be coming that wicked
+old Pryse,' he cried. 'What do he be wanting here?'
+
+The uphill road wound round to the farmyard in the rear. A stile
+admitted to the enclosure in front and a narrow gap farther away. Here,
+at the stile, he alighted from his horse, throwing the reins over the
+side-post.
+
+'Ah, sure,' said he, with the straight-lipped smile which he made so
+offensive, 'things must be prospering with you. It is well to have a
+builder in the family when the house is too small. Some one must be
+going to venture on a wife; or perhaps Mrs. Edwards has grown weary of
+her widowhood?'
+
+How evil was the look in those half-closed eyes of his, as William
+answered from his platform--
+
+'Rhys is going to be married, sir. Have you anything to say against
+that?'
+
+'Oh, dear, no. Rhys, indeed! Let me congratulate him on the auspicious
+prospect, and on the prosperity it indicates. His lordship will be
+delighted, I am sure, to hear of these additions to the farm and the
+family.' And as he spoke he rubbed one skinny hand over the other
+slowly--
+
+
+     'Washing his hands with invisible soap,
+       In imperceptible water'--
+
+
+with apparent satisfaction born of anything but goodwill.
+
+Rhys and Mrs. Edwards coming upon the scene, the same mock salutations
+were offered, the sneer being so palpable that Jonet involuntarily edged
+nearer to Thomas Williams, and Cate caught at the arm of Rhys as if for
+protection.
+
+For once he declined their proffered hospitality, contenting himself
+with a horn of cider. A mountain farmer's vegetarian meal was little to
+his liking, and he knew that meat was reserved for Sundays and rare
+festivals. Then mounting his horse he went trotting over the farm,
+reckoning up the value of crops stacked or standing, and of the sheep
+and cows pastured on the mountain-side, as if the produce had been his
+own, not the farmer's.
+
+His presence cast a temporary gloom over the family. He was regarded as
+a bird of ill-omen.
+
+But the cloud speedily dispersed, and the building went merrily on. By
+the beginning of October the rafters were on, and William had begun to
+thatch it in, and was considering the desirability of re-thatching the
+whole house, when their plans had a sudden check before Martinmas.
+
+William, mounted on a ladder, was taking a bundle of fresh straw from
+his young labourer, when a red-faced man, whom he seemed to remember
+unpleasantly, came boldly over the stile, took a folded paper from his
+greasy pocket, and demanded insolently to see 'Jane Edwards, the tenant
+at will.'
+
+He was the truculent official messenger of Mr. Pryse, and the paper he
+thrust into the widow's trembling hand was a formal 'notice of
+ejectment' from the farm!
+
+The skinny hand of Mr. Pryse had closed upon the family with a vice-like
+grip.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+WITH GRANDFATHER'S GOLD.
+
+
+Had the paper handed to Mrs. Edwards contained a burning fuse to set the
+whole homestead ablaze and lay it in ashes, it could scarcely have
+created greater consternation.
+
+The grin on the bearer's face and his mother's shriek of dismay brought
+William down from his ladder in haste, and sent the lad John Llwyd off
+at racing speed to carry the alarm of unknown calamity to the rest.
+
+One by one came Rhys, Davy, and Jonet rushing into the house, to find
+their mother, with her apron thrown over her head, rocking herself to
+and fro on the old grandfather's armchair, wringing her hands and
+moaning in the extremity of distress, that to them seemed inexplicable.
+
+'Oh that I should be living to see this day! Oh that things should ever
+be coming to this pass! Sure to goodness it will be the death of me!'
+
+William, by her side, was endeavouring to master the legal jargon of a
+document in his hands; while Ales, with arms and apron wet from the
+washtub, was bending over her mistress, and doing her rough best to
+check the outburst of grief after her own pithy fashion.
+
+'Name o' goodness, Jane Edwards, you do be taking on as if Mr. Pryse was
+God Almighty! Sure the battle's not lost before it do be fought. 'Deed,
+you couldn't fret worse if Rhys had been carried off like my Evan. Look
+to God, mistress; His breath can shrivel up Mr. Pryse like a leaf in an
+east wind.'
+
+But the shock was too new for immediate consolation. Philosophy is no
+plaister for a raw wound.
+
+Meanwhile William had tossed the 'notice' across the table to Rhys, with
+the remark, on which he set his strong, white teeth, 'The skinny old
+kite has whetted his beak, and do be thinking to tear us with his
+talons; but, if I don't be cutting his claws for him before the year
+runs out, my name's not William Edwards.'
+
+'The best way to do that would be to find the lease,' put in Davy. 'I
+wonder where grandfather did be hiding it?'
+
+'I'll find it out, if I pull the old house down, stone by stone,' cried
+William passionately; adding in another tone, 'Look you here, mother,
+crying will not be mending a broken egg. Let us show the old wretch a
+bold front, and who knows but God may help us to find the lease and keep
+the farm in spite of him. But, if not, in twelve months' time _I_ may be
+making a home for you, farm or no farm.'
+
+Rhys alone had not spoken. Jonet had crept up to her mother, and,
+kneeling by her side, whispered comforting words, whilst tears ran down
+her own cheeks.
+
+Rhys dashed the paper down on the floor and strode out, a suppressed cry
+of bitter anguish bursting from him. He could not ask Cate to marry now,
+with ruin hanging over them! He almost reeled against the doorway of the
+newly-erected addition, and groaned aloud. He felt as if the blow was
+directed against him--him above all.
+
+'I did be so happy,' he murmured, 'and now--Oh, Cate, dear Cate, how can
+I be breaking the terrible news to you!'
+
+Davy had followed Rhys.
+
+''Deed, I will be for telling Cate, if it will be saving you pain,' he
+suggested quietly. 'Perhaps she may be taking it best from me.'
+
+'Sure, Davy, you was always a good fellow,' was all the assent of Rhys.
+But without turning round he stretched out his broad brown hand to meet
+the warm clasp of Davy, who, in another minute, was on his way steadily
+downhill.
+
+Probably both brothers anticipated hot-tempered tantrums from Cate
+Griffiths at the sudden change of her matrimonial prospects. But for
+once it was the mother, and not the girl, who flew into a rage at what
+she regarded as the final defeat of long-laid schemes.
+
+For a moment Cate seemed dazed. 'Poor Rhys!' was all she said; 'he will
+need some one to comfort him, and your mother too.'
+
+Ten minutes later Rhys, leaning stupidly against the door-frame where
+Davy had left him, felt a pair of warm arms steal round his neck, and a
+loving voice say, 'Poor Rhys! What do it matter? There do be other farms
+to be had. We shall not lose each other if we do be waiting. You have
+got a lease _somewhere_ that shall upset old Pryse. And look you, Rhys,
+neither Pryse nor his lordship have leases of their lives. He may not
+live to turn you out. Do not be disheartened. Trust God, do your duty,
+and leave the rest to Him!'
+
+Poor Rhys! The very first words of sympathy had sunk into his soul. He
+had never known Cate so loving in all his life. She had been wayward,
+teasing, and tantalising, but never thus. His trial sank to nothing in
+the new discovery. He clasped her close, and took courage. Half his fear
+had been to lose her.
+
+A loud summons from Ales recalled Rhys to neglected duties, and
+barefooted Cate sped homewards to have a sharp-tongued contest with her
+mother, who renewed an old cry that 'Cate needn't be spoiling her market
+for Rhys Edwards, whatever.'
+
+The news spread rapidly that Mrs. Edwards had notice to quit the farm
+next Michaelmas, and commiseration was general.
+
+But when Jane Edwards, supported by Rhys and Owen Griffith, walked into
+Mr. Pryse's apartment at the inn on the 9th of October, Caerphilly Fair
+Day, neither she nor Rhys made any allusion to the notice received or
+looked in any way daunted.
+
+She put down her money, and asked for her receipt.
+
+The agent eyed her curiously, but in the face of two witnesses he
+required to guard his words.
+
+As Mrs. Edwards examined carefully the receipt he gave, he remarked,
+with his sinister smile--
+
+'His lordship requires you to pay due regard to the ejectment notice
+served upon you. He cannot permit _tenants at will_ to build on his land
+without express permission.'
+
+'_If_ his lordship do be knowing anything of that ejectment notice, he
+will know that it be just so much waste paper. Good-day, sir.'
+
+He opened his eyes wide for once, and stared at her, but without another
+word Mrs. Edwards left the room, followed by Rhys and Griffith, who had
+previously paid his rent.
+
+'You touched him there,' said they both in a breath, when clear of the
+inn.
+
+They would have been sure of it had they seen him start from his seat
+and grasp the arms of his chair, exclaiming, as he sank back again--
+
+'Confound the woman! What did she mean? Is the lease found? And what
+meant her innuendo anent his lordship's knowledge. They cannot
+have--but--no, no!' And there he sat biting his long nails in
+perplexity, oblivious of frequent knocks at the door, or tenants waiting
+in the passage for their turn.
+
+No, the lease had not been found, but something else had, from which
+Mrs. Edwards derived her courage.
+
+In the first outpouring of her indignation she had forbidden William to
+proceed with his thatching. But he was equally persistent.
+
+'What, mother!' he cried hotly, 'leave that bit of a place unroofed to
+be telling old Pryse that we be frightened by his dirty paper? Not I.
+And it's my belief his lordship does not know one word about it,
+whatever.'
+
+The words dropped from his lips like an inspiration. His mother caught
+at them.
+
+William, taking the bit between his teeth, was up his ladder, with John
+Llwyd in attendance, before she had fully mastered the probabilities of
+the case.
+
+It was not a long business, for considering the state of affairs he was
+not so foolhardy as to re-roof the whole farm. But to make a neat job of
+it he had to clear away the worn and jagged edges of the old thatch to
+make an even joining.
+
+As he did so, and created a gap, something fell down inside the kitchen
+with a thud and a rattle.
+
+'Name o' goodness, what's that?' cried Ales from the fireplace, almost
+losing her hold of the iron pot she was hanging on the hook. 'Do you be
+going to bring the house about our ears?'
+
+Another moment she sent up a scream, 'It's found! It's found! Thank
+God!'
+
+But before she could lay hands upon the prize William was in the house,
+and had picked up a small oak box covered with dust and mould.
+
+The scream of Ales brought Mrs. Edwards in from the farmyard with an
+apron full of eggs that fell with a smash to the floor.
+
+What mattered the eggs? The sight of that curious old box drove eggs out
+of mind!
+
+'Oh, goodness, Willem! That was your grandfather's box! Many a hunt your
+poor dear father did have for that box. Open it, quick!'
+
+'It's locked, mother. I cannot force the hasp, it do fit so tight.'
+
+'Ah, yes, I do forget. I do have kept the key all these years. Here,
+here, do make haste!'
+
+How her fingers trembled as she brought from her deep pocket the big key
+of the coffer, and the tiny one so well preserved for--this.
+
+A folded paper, and a multitude of coins!
+
+John Llwyd peeping in at the door, roughly driven off by Ales, like
+another winged-footed Mercury, flew over field and fallow, echoing her
+cry, 'It's found! It's found!'
+
+Before the paper could be read, or the coins counted, there were other
+echoes besides William's to the mother's pious 'Thanks be to God!'
+
+The paper was a _will_, duly signed and witnessed, by which William
+David Edwards bequeathed to his son William, and to his eldest son Rhys
+after him, the lease of the farm, and all property in the land held
+under that lease, with whatever stock and crops might be thereon at his
+decease. And further left whatever moneys might be found along with that
+will for the use of that son, William, should necessity arise, but laid
+a charge upon him not to diminish but to add to the store, to be divided
+between David and any future children born to the said William and Jane
+Edwards, in order to help them also to make a start in life.
+
+What a shout went up when the '_lease_' was named! It became no longer a
+disputed fact. Here was legal proof that might serve them in good stead
+if the lease itself could not be found. No doubt the careful
+grandfather--who had died suddenly in a fit--had secreted that as well
+as the will just come to light. That might turn up any day.
+
+Hope was in the ascendant. And now for the coins. Some--the five-pound
+and two-pound pieces of William and Mary--were unknown to the young men,
+though coined during the manhood of the hoarder; but the remainder,
+guineas and half-guineas from the mints alike of William and Queen Anne,
+had not yet dropped out of circulation, if seldom seen. Except four
+tarnished crown pieces, there was no silver.
+
+It was a golden inheritance to feast their eyes upon. In all one hundred
+and forty-five pounds. Such a store had never met their sight before.
+
+Yet, with the new possession came the dread of robbers. Ales counselled
+silence.
+
+''Deed, and it's best the teeth guard the tongue. It be a fool's trick
+to show the old fox the hen's nest. Him as could steal my Evan might lay
+his claws on your gold.'
+
+It was good advice, and wisely followed.
+
+John Llwyd had seen a paper unfolded, but no gold; so what he had to
+tell did not count for much to hearers unconcerned.
+
+But, coupled with the demeanour of Mrs. Edwards and her son, it put Mr.
+Pryse on the tenter-hooks of uncertainty.
+
+The thatching was completed, but no other little secret hiding-place was
+found, and discovery ended there.
+
+It was the season for the general repair of fences and dry walls, and
+William was kept busy.
+
+Winter was wearing away when, through his friend Thomas Williams,
+another stroke of good fortune came to him.
+
+Though I have called the latter a carpenter, the word must be taken in
+its broadest significance; he was also a joiner, and he aspired to be a
+millwright. In the days when he served his long apprenticeship, a man
+was expected to master his craft in all its details and branches, and to
+bring his mind to bear upon it, if he had one. He was older than his
+friend, and the very nature of his occupation had enlarged the circle
+under his observation.
+
+Unknown to any but William Edwards, his attic was stored with models of
+millwheels and machinery in various stages, at which he wrought when his
+workshop was closed.
+
+One morning, whilst February's snow yet lay upon the ground, a
+substantial miller named Owen Wynn, whose old mill threatened to topple
+over into the stream, stopped his horse at the carpenter's door, and
+asked abruptly 'if that was one of the buildings a young man named
+Edwards had put up.'
+
+Being answered in the affirmative, he asked permission to look over the
+place, adding--
+
+'Sure, I have heard he is the best mason that ever put stone together in
+these parts, and I would like to be seeing for myself, whatever.'
+
+Nothing loth, Thomas led the stranger over the whole premises (small, as
+_we_ should think), indicating the peculiar points of the builder's
+excellence.
+
+'Yes, yes,' said he, 'I observe,' and straightway marched up the attic
+stairs uninvited.
+
+The models arrested his attention. 'Hah, sure! you are a millwright, are
+you? Are those improvements?'
+
+Thomas Williams modestly 'thought they were.'
+
+'Then you and this Edwards could build a substantial mill between you?'
+
+'Without a doubt, whatever.'
+
+'Is the mason at hand?'
+
+''Deed, my apprentice do be gone for him.' The prescient young fellow
+had already scented business.
+
+Sturdy and self-reliant as William might be, and older than his years,
+yet there could be no mistaking eighteen for thirty.
+
+The miller started when he approached, his apron on, his hammer in his
+hand. He thought him extremely young to have obtained such repute.
+
+However, before they separated, the two had been commissioned to build
+his water-mill and house, and a time appointed to find a suitable spot.
+
+They were both conscious that it _was an undertaking_--with William a
+great one. They felt as if the making or marring of their lives was in
+their hands. But they were not daunted.
+
+'If difficulties arise we must surmount them,' said William resolutely,
+before his plans were drawn. 'As I cannot get books I can read, I must
+be studying the castle again.'
+
+There were no Welsh books of any technical value to him; English he was
+unable to read. Fortunately for him, the walls and towers and arches of
+Caerphilly Castle had been as the leaves of an open and intelligible
+book, a work on ancient masonry no printed volume could surpass.
+
+He had need to study it well now, to learn the secret of the arch, and
+how to construct a tunnel to bear away the watery overflow from the
+mill-wheel.
+
+Learn it the young mason did, and that effectually.
+
+Hard at work were they and their men all through the summer months, the
+builders with stone and wood, and ere the frosts of autumn came to lay a
+destructive finger on the mortar, there was a goodly mill by the side of
+the river, storey rising above storey, and the tunnelled waterway firm
+and compact, only some woodwork and the flagstone roof to be added.
+
+It had been a period of great anxiety to both young men, for besides the
+risks attending all experimental work, Edwards was uneasy respecting his
+mother's possession of the farm, and Thomas Williams had resolved to
+seek Jonet for a wife if their work was a success.
+
+Of any portion he might expect with her he knew nothing.
+
+The corn had ripened for the sickle, but no lease had yet been found.
+September shone upon the land, and the case became urgent.
+
+One evening, when the masons had laid by their tools for the night, the
+good vicar had a visitor. William Edwards desired to see the Rev. John
+Smith most particularly.
+
+[Illustration: HE FOUND MR. MORRIS SEATED AT THE TABLE AS WELL AS THE
+VICAR.--_See page 245._]
+
+To his surprise, when he was ushered into the low-ceiled parlour, he
+found Mr. Morris seated at the table as well as the vicar, evidently
+examining a number of geological specimens by the light of a couple of
+candles.
+
+William had met Mr. Morris several times of late chipping at rocks with
+a hammer, but did not expect to meet with him there, and could have
+dispensed with his presence.
+
+'Well, Edwards, what is your business?' asked the vicar after the first
+salutations. 'You need not hesitate to speak out; Mr. Morris is as much
+your friend as I am. What is it? Anything concerning the fine mill you
+are erecting?'
+
+'No, sir, it do be concerning the farm--and Mr. Pryse.'
+
+The gentlemen exchanged glances across the table. The change in
+William's frank voice and manner had not been lost on them.
+
+William laid his grandfather's will open before the vicar.
+
+'We did be finding that last autumn hid in a small box under the thatch,
+sir.'
+
+'You did not find the missing lease along with it, did you?'
+
+'No, sir. And we cannot be finding it, high or low. But you will see,
+sir, the lease be named here more than once.' And drawing closer to the
+vicar he pointed with his finger.
+
+'Yes, I perceive. Well, that certainly establishes the fact that you
+_had_ a lease.'
+
+'Sure, indeed, sir. But do you be thinking it would serve instead of the
+real lease to stop Mr. Pryse from turning us out of the farm?'
+questioned William, with a very anxious face.
+
+'Um--a--um--a--well, I am not so sure about that. We might get an
+opinion if there was a lawyer about, not under Pryse's finger and thumb.
+You must know, Morris,' said the vicar, turning to his friend, 'this
+young fellow's father gave mortal offence to Pryse by a blunt opinion
+that he was overreaching. He has owed the family a grudge ever since,
+and has done all in his power to oust the widow from her holding. You
+will remember the talk there was, six years ago, about the disappearance
+of a young man from Cardiff, who was supposed to have gone off in the
+mysterious _Osprey_ with money, not his own--some people said was
+"_carried_ off" perforce. Anyway, that was the farm-servant of Mrs.
+Edwards, who was about to be married--for I read out the banns--and he
+had with him both his own savings and the money to pay the widow's
+half-year's rent. He was seen to enter Mr. Pryse's office. He ordered
+and bought things to set up farming, and _paid_ for some. In three
+weeks' time Mr. Pryse made a seizure on the farm for unpaid rent,
+declaring the man a defaulter. Fortunately, Mrs. Edwards had the means
+to meet his demands. Since then he has twice raised the rent, insisting
+that the widow is only a tenant at will, and last Martinmas served her
+with a notice of ejectment to come in force this present month,
+insisting that no lease exists. It so happens that both the father and
+grandfather died too suddenly to make any disclosures or arrangements.
+Thus the lease is missing, and this will has only just come to light.
+Look it over, and say what you think.'
+
+'Take a seat, William. I did not observe that you were standing all this
+while,' he added.
+
+Mr. Morris shook his head as he folded up and returned the document. 'To
+any unprejudiced person this settles all doubt that a lease exists, and
+the duplicate must be in the possession of his lordship or his agent.
+But it does not specify the terms or the date of the lease, and _there_
+Mr. Pryse has the advantage. He may know of some clause you have
+infringed.'
+
+William sighed heavily. 'Then there will be no hope for us. It will
+break poor mother's heart, in truth it will. We don't believe his
+lordship knows a word. If I could but get to see him. But there, Mr.
+Pryse would stop that!' and he rose to depart.
+
+'Stay, stay!' cried Mr. Morris; 'maybe I can help you at this pinch.
+Find me pen, ink, and paper, Mr. Smith.'
+
+William looked on in bewilderment whilst the quill of Mr. Morris went
+squeaking across the paper, or he nibbled the feather end of the pen in
+a pause for thought, or for an answer to a question.
+
+After a time, which to William appeared hours, he threw the paper across
+the table to the vicar.
+
+'There,' said he, 'is a brief statement of the case, as detailed to me.
+If you find it correct, pray both of you affix your signatures. It shall
+be my care _that_ reaches his lordship's own hand, though he is now at
+Court, and time is short. If you leave the will in our good vicar's
+charge, I will make a fair copy and enclose it, along with some private
+intelligence of my own concerning Mr. Pryse. Good-night, young man. Tell
+your mother not to be downhearted.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+IN THE NICK OF TIME.
+
+
+'Name o' goodness, what be keeping Willem out so late?' said his mother,
+peering out into the night. 'I do hope he have not been stopping at the
+inn again, and him with that will in his pocket. He do be getting very
+unsteady since he has been having those big places to build.'
+
+''Deed, his sudden rise do be turning his head. He may have as sudden a
+fall one of these days,' was the commentary of Rhys.
+
+But when William came in half an hour later, as steady and sober as his
+brothers, and explained satisfactorily how he chanced to be so very
+late, there was nothing but the voice of gratitude to be heard. He had
+left the vicarage almost choked by his own inarticulate thanks.
+
+'It was quite providential that Mr. Morris did be staying at the
+vicarage,' said Mrs. Edwards. 'He do be a great man, sure, and kind.'
+
+'Yes, yes, and it was providential that _I_ went to consult the vicar,
+instead of Rhys. Mr. Morris would be knowing nothing of _him_,
+whatever,' added William, rather proudly.
+
+It was true that his uncommon success was making him somewhat
+self-sufficient. But so Rhys had been, with less reason.
+
+The weeks crept slowly on one after another.
+
+At the new mill, mason and millwright congratulated each other on
+hazardous difficulties overcome. The roof was on to the last flag. The
+arched tunnel was strong and firm. The machinery worked well, and the
+wheel went merrily round. When the painters cleared away their paint
+pots, they could hand the key to the miller in triumph.
+
+At the farm, hope had given way to doubt, and doubt was sinking into
+despair. The prayer of faith was timid and wavering. Only another day
+remained before the dreaded 9th of October, and as yet nothing had been
+heard either from Mr. Morris or the vicar, or from his lordship.
+Impending evil took the gloss off William's satisfaction.
+
+The morning of Tuesday the 8th broke dull, dreary, and depressing, with
+a heavy mist on the mountain and in the valley, which, towards eight
+o'clock, resolved itself into a drizzling rain, that made the cattle
+hang their heads and the sheep huddle together for mutual comfort.
+
+In view of contingencies, the farm stock had been reduced by sale below
+ordinary limits, and well-disposed neighbours had offered temporary
+houseroom and shelter amongst them for both family and anything movable.
+Thomas Williams cleared out his large attic for their accommodation, and
+Robert Jones promised to keep his team in readiness to remove household
+goods or newly-gathered crops at a moment's notice.
+
+Nothing was being done on the farm but what common care for the living,
+biped and quadruped, rendered necessary. But a general ransack of house
+and barns was going on for the discovery of the missing lease, and
+everything was topsy-turvy. Never had the storeroom had such a turn-out
+for years. Red-eyed Jonet and Cate ripped open beds and pillows, turned
+over sacks, dived among fleeces. For the twentieth time Mrs. Edwards
+emptied the great oak chest, and turned over the leaves of the large old
+Bible, her face grey and set like a rock.
+
+Ales alone bore a cheerful countenance, and baked the week's bread as in
+the ordinary course.
+
+'Look you, Jane Edwards,' she said, 'it's no use fretting and fuming.
+What God wills we must bear. But there's no need to be putting the
+burden on one's own back before He bids one take it up.'
+
+Mrs. Edwards sighed heavily. 'Ah, yes, Ales, true it is; but a good
+servant need never seek good service. We may seek far for a good farm.'
+
+'You don't be turned off this yet. And it's my firm belief you will be
+keeping the farm in spite of old Pryse. God's finger is stronger than
+man's arm. You wait and be patient. I've not been dreaming of Evan night
+after night for nothing. He seems to say, "I'm coming, I'm coming;" and
+I feel as if God was bringing him back, look you. I do!'
+
+'Ah, poor, foolish Ales! your longings do create your dreams. Evan be as
+far to seek as our lease.'
+
+'May be so, and may be not. I do be feeling as if he was as near and as
+warm almost as the loaf just baked, look you. And I feel, I feel'--
+
+'You do _look_ half out of your mind, Ales,' said Mrs. Edwards, in grave
+rebuke, rising from her hopeless quest and locking the coffer again.
+'This be no time to talk of foolish dreams.'
+
+'Mother,' called Jonet from the bedroom they were searching, 'there be a
+strange man with a bundle on a stick coming over the stile, and he's
+dripping wet.'
+
+Ales screamed, darted out by the open door, and before Mrs. Edwards
+could follow she was clasped in the arms of a rough-looking fellow, and
+crying out, 'I knew, I knew! Thank God!' In another moment she was
+sobbing and laughing hysterically on his breast in the reaction of her
+strange excitement.
+
+'Name o' goodness, that never do be you, Evan?' burst from Mrs. Edwards
+in unmitigated amazement.
+
+[Illustration: LONG-LOST EVAN HAD COME BACK.--_See page 252._]
+
+'Ay, ay, it's me for certain,' was answered cheerily, as the sturdy,
+unshaved man brushed past her, carrying his limp sweetheart into the
+kitchen and grandfather's stiff-backed chair, heedless of the wet trail
+he left upon the floor.
+
+Picture the excitement. Strong-minded Ales in hysterics! Jonet and Cate
+rushing about wildly, and shouting out that long-lost Evan had come
+back! William and Rhys hurrying in, astonished and delighted, followed
+by Davy, for once in a hurry; and Evan, loth to release Ales, puzzled
+to find hands for them all to shake at once, and equally puzzled how to
+compose Ales, who is sobbing and laughing by turns.
+
+Housewifely instinct, or a peculiar fume in her nostrils, acts as a
+restorative. 'The bread's burning,' she gasps and Cate presses forward
+to the rescue of the scorching loaves, forgotten in the confusion and
+excitement.
+
+Then follows a string of questions, huddled one upon another, but before
+any one can be answered, Mrs. Edwards says dolefully, 'Ah, Evan, we be
+thankful to see you back, but you have come on a sad day for all that.'
+
+'Have I? Then, 'deed, it had nearly been a sadder for in coming across
+the ford, I either mistook my depth, or the water is rising, for it came
+up to my waistband, and nearly carried me off my feet. But I'm not to be
+drowned, that's clear, till I've settled with that old rogue Pryse,' he
+says, with an emphasis and a look that are in themselves anathemas.
+
+'Ah, I told you so,' cries Ales. 'Woe to the man that makes a hundred
+sad!' but in the midst of an affirmative chorus comes an interruption in
+the shape of the old brown house-dog, wagging his tail and dropping a
+big bundle wrapped in sailcloth at the feet of Evan, then jumping up to
+ask for recognition and thanks.
+
+It is then seen that Evan is standing in a pool of water, whereupon Mrs.
+Edwards orders him off to change his wet clothes for the dry ones in his
+bundle, whilst she and the other women bestir themselves to set the
+dinner on the table, Ales making all sorts of blunders in the process.
+
+It is by no means a common dinner on a Welsh farm table at that period,
+although it only comprises pork, potatoes, and greens, boiled in the
+same pot with the dough dumplings. Mrs. Edwards marks it out reverently
+as they take their seats.
+
+'Let us be thanking Almighty God that the good food provided for our
+last dinner under this roof should have become, by His blessing, a
+thanksgiving feast; for the one supposed dead do be alive again, the one
+lost do be found.'
+
+The general 'Amen' was peculiarly solemn, and it occurred to Evan that
+for a thanksgiving there was more of sorrow than gladness.
+
+Then the first greeting of Mrs. Edwards recurred to him, coupled with
+the remark about a 'last dinner'; and though the savour was appetising,
+and his fast had been long, he could not have touched a morsel until his
+doubts were resolved. He put his question, and was speedily answered by
+more than one voice--
+
+'Oh, Evan, we cannot find our lease, and Mr. Pryse be going to drive us
+off the farm to-morrow.'
+
+It was his turn to look solemn. ''Deed, and that do be bad. You do have
+a lease, sure to goodness?'
+
+'Oh yes. Willem found grandfather's will, and the lease do be left to
+Rhys; but no lease can we be finding anywhere.'
+
+'Where have you been looking?'
+
+All sorts of likely and unlikely places were named.
+
+'My first master kept his lease in the Bible. Did you look there?'
+
+'Indeed, yes, Evan,' came from Mrs. Edwards, with a disheartened sigh;
+'I turned over every leaf.'
+
+'Oh, I do mean under the old cloth cover. He kept his there.'
+
+A moment of breathless astonishment--a general rise from the table!
+
+Mrs. Edwards was down on her knees unlocking the coffer.
+
+In another minute the Bible was out; the stout cloth cover ripped off.
+There lay the parchment, flat and clean, as when laid there years upon
+years before by hands now in the clasp of death.
+
+'_Thank God!_' cried Mrs. Edwards, still upon her knees. 'My children,
+the finger of God is in this. Our search did be vain till He did send
+His own messenger to point it out. As Ales did say, God's finger _is_
+stronger than man's arm; strong to save. Let us once more thank Him.'
+
+The relief had been overpowering. The thanksgiving was strong and deep.
+The reaction was too great almost for speech. The dinner, nearly cold,
+was eaten in silence; but it was the silence of hopefulness, not
+despair.
+
+It was followed by a clattering and chattering of loosened tongues,
+guesses at Mr. Pryse's consternation on the morrow, and questionings of
+Evan's disappearance and adventures, which we may leave that morrow to
+answer.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mean though he was through every fibre of his being, Mr. Pryse was
+lavish in regard to his own creature comforts. Yet even many of these
+he contrived to obtain gratuitously from tenants who loved him little
+and feared him much, or from obsequious sea-captains whose cargo was not
+altogether coal or iron, captains who had goods to bring ashore without
+compliments to Custom House officers. And those were anything but days
+of free trade.
+
+He sat at ease between a cosy fire, which cost him nothing, and a round
+breakfast-table on which were the remains of chicken, ham, and eggs, all
+of which were equally cheap. A fragrant aroma of Mocha coffee yet
+lingered around the foreign china cup and saucer and coffee-pot, none of
+which had paid duty to England's monarch, any more than the Barcelona
+silk handkerchief cast lightly over the knee he was indolently nursing
+on the other, whilst he leaned back in his tall chair picking his teeth,
+and a smile of uttermost self-content and enjoyment creased the
+parchment-like skin into folds under his wicked old eyes.
+
+'Yes,' said he, half aloud to himself; 'out they go to-morrow, stock and
+lot! And let them get another farm where they can. Lease, indeed'--and
+he chuckled. 'If they could find any lease to show, there would have
+been no sending of cows and sheep and grain to market. Ah, yes, I shall
+soon pay off my old score to that fellow who drowned himself like a
+fool. Yes, and get a higher rent, now that building son of his has
+enlarged the homestead.'
+
+The chuckle had not died out of his skinny throat when the door opened,
+and he caught his breath, for a special messenger from his lordship,
+booted and spurred, like one who rides in haste, entered unannounced,
+and with the simple remark that he 'had rather a rough passage across
+the Severn from Bristol that morning, and found the air raw and cold,'
+presented a sealed packet, marked 'Immediate and important.'
+
+Had he said he crossed in a Revenue cutter, Mr. Pryse might not so
+readily have taken the hint thrown out.
+
+As it was, he apologised for the coldness of the breakfast, and from a
+private cabinet produced a bottle of genuine Hollands--which had never
+gone through a Custom House--and, setting them before his unexpected
+visitor, invited him to help himself.
+
+'I trust his lordship is well?' he said blandly, but quite as a matter
+of course.
+
+'No; he was dangerously ill when I left,' came from the courier, with
+startling bluntness.
+
+What? His easy-going master ill! perhaps dying! Mr. Pryse turned ashen
+grey. 'You don't say so!' he ejaculated with a gasp, his fingers
+trembling, as he at last unfolded the despatch and began to read, hardly
+conscious that the man, smacking his lips over the fiery Hollands, had
+been watching him all along with keen, observant eyes.
+
+With all Mr. Pryse's self-command the paper rattled in his fingers as he
+read. It was not a lengthy epistle, and only the signature was his
+lordship's; the letter was from his son and heir. Its sole purport was
+to prevent injustice, as the act of a dying man.
+
+In stern and peremptory words it forbade Simon Pryse to harass or
+disturb the Widow Edwards in her holding, since he must know it was
+leased for three lives, and would not fall in until the demise of
+William Edwards' eldest son, then living. Moreover, he was commanded to
+refund, from his own purse, all excess rent he had extorted from the
+widow, _yet not included in his accounts_. And he was required to
+furnish a true and just statement of all the moneys in his hands and all
+his dealings and transactions in his lordship's name, not omitting the
+share he was said to have taken in the abduction of one Evan Evans,
+seven years prior to that date.
+
+'It shall be done,' said Mr. Pryse hoarsely, as the messenger rose to
+depart, fully satisfied with the result of his observations.
+
+'Yes, it _shall_ be done!' cried the infuriated agent, when the man was
+gone, springing to his feet with a tremendous oath. 'But not as his
+lordship or his lordship's heir proposes. Shall I forego the revenge I
+have nursed for years, when a few hours will bring the hated tribe
+within my grip? No; I will set my feet upon their necks if I die for
+it!' and another fierce anathema parted those thin lips of his.
+
+All on a sudden he stopped short, and bit his long nails viciously. 'Has
+some one turned traitor?' he murmured between set teeth. 'Those poor
+farming idiots could not get a letter to his lordship's hand. No matter.
+The bolt has fallen sooner than I expected, but trust me to be taken
+unprepared. It has fallen in the nick of time. In another hour the
+_Cambria_ would have sailed.'
+
+Upstairs, three steps at a time like a boy, he ran, exulting in his own
+crafty schemes for outwitting justice; drew his blue and white check
+curtain quite across his bedroom window--a preconcerted signal to the
+_Cambria's_ skipper--changed his kerseymere smalls for his leather
+riding breeches, and was downstairs in his private office as usual, yet
+not as usual. He was on his knees before his strong box and his golden
+god.
+
+In his guilty knowledge and his craftiness, he had years before prepared
+for flight on emergency. He had lodged a portion of his filchings in
+Wood's Gloucester Bank, under a fictitious name. Yet as there was no
+other provincial bank at that time in all England and Wales, and no bank
+notes under L20 value, exchange was not easy. Rents, etc., were paid in
+specie. Specie also was transmitted to his lordship under strict guard.
+Whenever an opportunity occurred, the agent converted coin into notes,
+and packed them in the waistband of his leather breeches. Still, coin
+had accumulated in his strong box, always packed close, and secured with
+triple locks, ready for removal on short notice, though its weight
+belied its bulk.
+
+The signal brought the skipper. There was already a tacit understanding
+between the worthy pair, and their conference was brief. Arrangements
+were made for the _Cambria_ to drop down the river with the evening
+tide, and lay to outside in the bay. Fain would the skipper have Mr.
+Pryse go aboard with his strong box, and make all sail at once.
+
+No, no; he was not willing to forego his revenge or the prospect of
+adding a succession of rents to his ill-gotten gains; so a four-oared
+boat was to meet him at Taff's Well landing-place up the river on the
+morrow, and await his coming--ay, even until midnight.
+
+His impish friends, Avarice and Malice, were more potent advisers than
+the wary skipper; so, with a shrug of the shoulders, he withdrew, and
+obeyed.
+
+'That's a heavy load you've got, messmates,' called a sailor to the two
+others conveying to the schooner the strong box, covered with tarpaulin,
+as if to protect it from the rain. But they merely answered, 'Ay, ay,'
+and declined assistance.
+
+The afternoon was then far spent, but two horses stood at the door, and
+in a few minutes Mr. Pryse, booted and spurred, and cased in a long
+riding-coat, was in the saddle, the flaps of his three-cornered hat let
+down, as was commonly the case in wet weather, so as to convert it into
+a broad-brimmed slouch, a pair of saddle-bags slung before him, likewise
+holsters, fitted with pistols, carefully loaded.
+
+He trotted away from the door he was never to see again, with a lie on
+his lips to his housekeeper, and, followed by his less
+elaborately-accoutred attendant, took the new Merthyr Tydvil Road, which
+not only ran parallel with the river in a direct line wherever
+practicable, but avoided the long detour by Caerphilly, where no rents
+would be paid until the Martinmas Fair.
+
+He had rents, and more than rents, to collect as he stopped at wayside
+houses, or so-called inns, off and on the direct road, and was not to be
+denied, though a day before due. So he managed to pocket some heavy cash
+before, at a late hour, he stopped for the night under the shadow of
+cliff-seated Castel Coch, to dry his drenched overcoat, eat a hearty
+supper, and retire to _rest_, leaving orders that he was to be in the
+saddle by daybreak in the morning.
+
+He was in a desperate hurry to transact his pleasant bit of business
+with Mrs. Edwards, but could not forbear grasping at all the coin he
+could by the way, never thinking that the overreaching hand is apt to
+grasp at shadows.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+THE FINGER OF GOD.
+
+
+The heavy rain had ceased in the night. The sky was clear, the eaves and
+trees had forgotten to drip, the mist was lifting from the mountain-top
+and from the surcharged river, when, after a succession of profitable
+calls, between nine and ten o'clock in the morning, master and man rode
+up the rugged ascent to Brookside Farm, and, dismounting, the former
+walked into the house with insolent assumption, and, finding only Mrs.
+Edwards there, demanded rudely--
+
+'Is the half-year's rent ready?' Of course, that was his first care.
+
+'There do be no rent owing, sir.'
+
+'What do you mean, woman?'
+
+'I mean that you have been paid, and overpaid, and I do not be going to
+pay you one brass farthing.'
+
+He grew livid, set his teeth, and looked as if he would have struck her
+to the ground.
+
+'We'll see about that. You had due notice to quit. You have stayed on
+the farm in defiance of the law, and now, by'--(and he swore a great
+oath)--'you shall turn out without stick or stock. Morgan,' over his
+shoulder to the man, 'call up the other men. We will soon see who is
+master here. I seize in his lordship's name.'
+
+'And _I_ forbid in his lordship's name,' said Mr. Morris, whose shadow
+in the doorway had been mistaken for the man Morgan's.
+
+Mr. Pryse recoiled. Mr. Morris was no stranger to him; and no friend of
+his, he well knew. What brought him there, or the vicar, close at his
+heels?
+
+'By what right do _you_ presume to interfere?' he asked boldly.
+
+'By _this_, sir,' unfolding a letter. 'I presume you know his lordship's
+hand and seal. _You_ were not the only one for whom the courier had a
+despatch yesterday.'
+
+Mr. Pryse seemed to shrink within his clothes. A greenish hue overspread
+the yellow of his skin. A clammy dew burst out upon his forehead. Had he
+spurned the skipper's sage advice only to come here for this? It was
+maddening to think of.
+
+He attempted to brazen it out, as a last resource.
+
+'I am acting in his lordship's interest, sir. He has been shamelessly
+misinformed. These people have not paid more than a fair rental. And
+they never had a lease.'
+
+'What do you be calling _that_, sir?' And Rhys pressing to the front,
+held up the lease--at a safe distance, for Mr. Pryse appeared ready to
+spring upon it like a wild cat.
+
+'And now, sir,' said Mr. Morris sternly, 'you will have to disgorge.
+Those are his lordship's orders. You see we hold a quittance for half a
+year's rent. Evan, bring forward the receipt.'
+
+Had a ghost risen from the grave to confront him, Mr. Pryse could not
+have looked more aghast or terror-stricken, when Evan stepped from
+behind into the light, with the faded receipt in his hand.
+
+Baffled, defeated, confronted, as it were, by the dead.
+
+Mr. Pryse shrieked aloud, fell on his knees, covering his eyes with his
+quivering hands.
+
+'You here?--_you?_ I fancied you had gone down with the _Osprey_.'
+
+'You hear him, gentlemen? You hear him? He do be owning his share in
+kidnapping me! No, you smuggling old rogue, when the _Osprey_ went all
+to pieces on the rocks at the Land's End with its drunken crew and
+cargo--I, yes indeed _I_, gentlemen, who had been dragged on board bound
+like a thief--I did be the only one saved. I had been sent up aloft to
+punish me because I would not join the wicked crew, and when the mast
+did go overboard, I held on for my very life. I did be picked up the
+next day by an outward-bound East Indiaman, when there was little life
+left in me. But I wasn't to be drowned till I'd settled scores with this
+old villain here, that did send me adrift with rogues like himself, and
+to rob the widow blackened my honest name.
+
+'No, Mr. Pryse, though I've been sailing the seas all these sorrowful
+years in one craft or other, cuffed, kicked, half-starved, used worse
+than a dog, and never able to make my way back to my sweetheart or
+home, if it had not been for another shipwreck I'd never have been here
+now. A Liverpool trader took me and two shipmates off a raft in the
+middle of the ocean, when we was half-mad with hunger and thirst, and
+the good captain, God bless him, sent me on shore at Fishguard, to make
+my way home to my sweetheart as quick as I could. And I didn't have to
+beg my way, for I had got money hid under my belt. And I do be thanking
+God sirs, for bringing me here in time to confound this wicked old
+shivering coward. I do be feeling as if I could shake every bone out of
+his ugly skin, but Ales bids me leave him to God and his master.'
+
+''Deed, he deserves kicking from the top of the hill to the bottom,'
+thrust in fiery William.
+
+Not a word had the detected steward spoken, but his features and his
+lean fingers worked vindictively, as if longing to grasp the speakers'
+throats.
+
+All at once he shrieked out--
+
+'That receipt's a forgery, a vile forgery. Look at it, gentlemen. That
+paper has never been in salt water. Ugh! How could a common sailor keep
+a bit of paper unworn and dry for six years, and through two shipwrecks?
+It is absurd.'
+
+Gaining courage from his own sneering suggestion, Mr. Pryse rose to his
+feet, little expecting the answer which came from William.
+
+''Deed, no, sirs. Neither our receipt, nor Owen Griffith's here, nor
+Evan's own money ever went nearer the sea than old Breint's saddle. He
+had made a private pocket under the lining, and there they did be
+waiting for him, yes, sure.'
+
+'It's well they did, for those thieves on the _Osprey_ did be stripping
+me of all I had,' put in Evan.
+
+And now, Mr. Morris declaring the receipts genuine, insisted on Mr.
+Pryse there and then refunding the extra rent extorted year by year from
+Mrs. Edwards, giving a quittance up to date on account of the receipt.
+
+But Mr. Pryse had recovered courage--and craft. He began to bluster.
+Refused to acknowledge the authority of either Mr. Morris or the vicar.
+He was answerable to his lordship. To him only would he render an
+account. He would bid them good-morning.
+
+'Well, sir,' said Mr. Morris, 'I cannot enforce his lordship's commands
+without legal warrant. But had I known all I have heard since I came
+hither, I should have come provided with a warrant for your arrest, Mr.
+Pryse. And I warn you the reckoning will come sooner than you expect.'
+
+Much sooner!
+
+He walked out of the farmhouse with head erect and defiant, as if he had
+won a victory. He bade Morgan pay his myrmidons and follow; then rode
+down hill baffled, but not wholly defeated. He had not disgorged a
+penny, had added other rents as he came along to the hoard he was
+carrying away. Warrant, indeed! He would soon be beyond reach of
+warrants!
+
+'Nay,' he shouted back with a snarl, 'threatened men live long;' but
+before he reached the level, some sense of ungratified revenge must have
+stung him, for he put spurs to his horse, and dashed on, splashing
+through the swollen brook, and turning the corner to the ford--not the
+high-road--as if pursued by a troop of demons.
+
+Blinded by his own evil passions, exulting in his escape, yet alarmed by
+the sound of hoofs behind him, he spurred his horse to the uncertain
+ford in the same hot haste, seeing nothing but his own need to cross.
+
+[Illustration: BLINDED BY PASSION, HE SPURRED HIS HORSE TO THE UNCERTAIN
+FORD.--_See page 271._]
+
+His follower heard a shriek, but reached the river's brink only in time
+to see a swirling mass of something far down the rain-filled river.
+
+Mr. Pryse had gone to meet the _Cambria's_ boat in other fashion than he
+contemplated.
+
+His spurs entangled in the stirrups, his pockets and saddle-bags
+weighted with ill-gotten coin, horse and man had gone together.
+
+A Welshman in a coracle[13] called out to the ferryman at Taff's Well
+Ferry, and he to the _Cambria's_ men rowing up-stream, and amongst them
+they got a panting, struggling, half-dead horse ashore, to find what
+_had_ been Mr. Pryse _underneath_, clutching at the turned saddle and
+bags with the grip that never relaxes--the grip of death.
+
+Cover him over. Let the Preventive-service men, chasing the other boat,
+fight with pistol and cutlass for the possession of the dead, his gold,
+and his incriminating papers, whilst the smart Preventive cutter in the
+bay boards the short-handed _Cambria_, and tows her confiscated prize
+into port, the dead man's strong box included. Little recks the drowned
+man what becomes of his hoard. He has gone to his final reckoning with a
+Lord he had forgotten, a Lord no man can cheat or deceive.
+
+Intelligence of his retributive death comes to the rejoicing family at
+the farm with a sobering shock, but nobody affects to lament. And all
+over his lordship's wide domain, oppressed men breathe freer for this
+one man's death.
+
+'Man deliberates, but God delivers,' is said with bated breath by more
+than sententious Ales, whilst Mrs. Edwards insists that his death is a
+judgment for his strictures on her lost husband.
+
+And whilst the unhonoured remains of the fraudulent agent are committed
+to the earth, in Cardiff, with no mourner but his housekeeper, the vicar
+of Eglwysilan reads out the banns once more for Evan and Ales, and for
+Rhys Edwards and Cate Griffiths also.
+
+Great is the bustle of preparation. There is money in possession and
+hope in the future.
+
+There is no need to ask for contributions at the 'bidding,' though the
+invited guests are many.
+
+The new room William built is being fitted up with somewhat more regard
+to health and decency than has been common hitherto. Cate is bringing to
+her bridegroom more than had been looked for--dowlas sheets and
+blankets, spun and woven under their own cottage roof, and a good flock
+bed and pillows from the same source. Then she had not been idle, and if
+under-_linen_ was not worn in those days in that humid climate, she had
+a fair supply of flannel, and of linsey-woolsey for gowns and aprons,
+all of her own spinning. Ay, and she had stockings knitted ready to
+assume with her new dignity.
+
+The cottage at Castella has long been occupied by other tenants. Mr.
+Morris offers Evan a small farm between Caerphilly and Cardiff, on very
+easy terms. The goods he had bought and paid for have been sold, but
+fresh are furnished readily; and Robert Jones generously conveys the
+long-hoarded household goods of Ales to her new home, without fee or
+guerdon, and, with them, a winter store of peat and culm as a wedding
+gift.
+
+Both at Owen's cottage and the farm the women are busy as bees, baking
+and boiling for the wedding feast, for which Thomas Williams sets up
+long plank tables in the meadow that slopes to the foot of the hill, the
+break-neck ascent to the farm being a consideration on such an occasion.
+
+For the brides are supposed unwilling to be wed, or their friends to
+part with them, and there is racing and chasing to recover the runaway
+brides, and mock contests to obtain possession of them, in which the
+mountain ponies play their parts well. Then, the brides being captured,
+there is the headlong race to the church, which bodes ill to any unwary
+pedestrian they may meet. It is a remnant of old barbaric custom not to
+be dispensed with, and all the youths and maidens, far and wide, join in
+the race. Scarcely less noisy is the return, when the ceremony is over,
+and each bride is mounted behind her husband, Rhys and Cate taking the
+precedence.
+
+Be sure they bring appetites to the feast, where huge joints of boiled
+beef are matched by piles of smoking potatoes and turnips, the
+brown-jacketed esculents being as yet dainties to the multitude. Then
+there are great pitchers of _cwrw da_ and buttermilk for thirsty
+throats. And if there be a deficiency of glass and cutlery, according to
+our notions, all is as it should be to the feasters, who are to the
+manner born, and not fastidious, and who fling their contributions to
+the feast into the earthen bowls with right goodwill.
+
+Something much more important gave grace to the festive occasion, and
+that was the presence of a Welsh harper, one of the decaying race of
+bards, who sang them songs of Arthur and Llewellyn, and twanged his harp
+for lively dances on the greensward when the boards were cleared, and
+might be held accountable for more than one match decided that day.
+Certainly Thomas Williams obtained Jonet's shy promise to marry him in
+the spring if her mother would consent; and even Davy struck up an
+acquaintance with the niece of Robert Jones, that was likely to lead to
+something more in the end.
+
+It was quite an exceptional gathering, for not a drop of rain fell the
+whole day to mar the entertainment, and, short though it was, a good
+round frosty moon offered its shining lamp to light the middle-aged
+couple and their escort to their new home beyond Caerphilly, and to make
+even the crossing of the Taff safe to the contingent from the mountains
+beyond. All had 'gone merry as a marriage bell.'
+
+And here my story might be supposed to end; but for my hero--and I count
+William Edwards a hero--a new era was about to dawn.
+
+I have indicated that mines of coal and iron were being worked in
+Glamorganshire, but that the want of roads and bridges for conveyance
+and communication retarded the development of its untold mineral
+resources. Then, the hard nature of the coal already dug unfitted it,
+except as culm, for household use or smelting purposes in such furnaces
+as existed, where the fuel was principally charcoal.
+
+But about this time experiments were being made to test its utility, and
+Mr. John Morris, who for years had gone geologising among the mountains,
+was one of the first to suggest its feasibility. He had made experiments
+on a small scale, but Mr. Pryse had thrown impediments in the way of
+smelting on a larger basis in the neighbourhood of Cardiff, where the
+river and the sea were close for conveyance if his scheme succeeded.
+
+'It was too near the Castle. His lordship would have no reeking furnaces
+so close to his residence. There was no land for sale,' etc. etc.
+
+Mr. Morris was not to be put down by Mr. Pryse. He had applied, not to
+the old Viscount, but to his son and heir, who was not hoodwinked by Mr.
+Pryse, and cordially seconded the proposal. The old Viscount was even
+then on his deathbed. The succession of the new one, shortly after Mr.
+Pryse was committed to his narrow cell, left Mr. Morris free to act.
+
+The day before the double wedding he explained his views to William
+Edwards, and made to him a proposition.
+
+So it happened that, whilst Rhys and the rest were making merry, William
+was half the time lost in thought, and one or other rallied him on his
+unsociability, as they considered it.
+
+_He_ was simply considering his ability to undertake the erection of the
+smelting furnaces John Morris had in view. He had not much doubt of his
+own power to accomplish anything any other man could do, or had done, if
+the opportunity to study what had been previously done was afforded him.
+But here something was required differing from aught that had gone
+before, or with which he was acquainted.
+
+Mr. Morris had given him time for mature deliberation. He had great
+faith in the capacity of the self-taught genius, and still more in his
+indomitable determination to overcome difficulties.
+
+Yet books he had none that would afford the information he needed. He
+had done what he could to supply the defects of his education, thanks to
+the vicar. But he was still 'Cymro uniaith,' a Welshman of one language;
+and, though the literature of Wales certainly dates back to the twelfth
+century, and is said to date back to the sixth, its ancient legends,
+ballads, and poems would not instruct him how to build furnaces which
+should convert the hard Welsh coal into the smelter's slave.
+
+If there were English books on the subject, he was ignorant, and could
+not have read them had such been laid before him.
+
+He was not given to waste his time in unprofitable regrets.
+
+Before any one else was astir he was on the road northward to Merthyr
+Tydvil, bent on examining the process of iron-smelting as there carried
+on. The name of John Morris procured him ready admission to the works.
+But, although they had been in existence for a couple of centuries, and
+the ancient forests had been denuded of their giant oaks to supply their
+furnaces, they had as yet no furnace that would fuse the ore with coal
+alone, and the oak trees were growing scarce.
+
+William came away shaking his head, and muttering as he strode along:
+'Sure, if those be their smelting furnaces, there do be one as good at
+the Castle. They do be wanting a stronger blast if they employ coal. It
+will be a job to construct furnaces that will burn the stone-coal Mr.
+Morris be saying gives such great heat with neither flame nor smoke. But
+I'm bound to have a try what I can be doing. Sure, I'm not willing to
+give in without a try, look you!'
+
+And in this frame of mind he returned home to make calculations and
+sketches, and to think out the matter, walking to and fro in front of
+the house, with his head bent down and his hands behind him.
+
+'Idling,' his mother called it. Rhys had grown wiser.
+
+''Deed, mother, Willem do be having his "thinks." Best be leaving him
+alone.'
+
+'But he do not even be knitting, look you!'
+
+'Never mind, mother _fach_; he do be "studdying," as he do call it. We
+work with our hands; Willem do work with his head--yes, yes.'
+
+The following day he was away again, much to his mother's discomfort, as
+his silent and wandering mood had always been.
+
+If she had followed, she might have tracked him to his old storehouse of
+knowledge, Caerphilly Castle, and far down a crumbling flight of stone
+steps to a curious vault below the level of the moat, and, beneath that
+marvel of marvels, the reft, overhanging tower.
+
+He had gathered, by inquiry from the vicar and others, that here had
+anciently been a furnace for the smelting of metals for coinage and
+other purposes; and that it was supposed to have been employed, during a
+siege, for melting lead to pour from the battlements upon the besiegers;
+and, further, that either the besiegers or some traitor within contrived
+to let in a jet of water from the moat upon the molten metal, causing
+the terrific explosion which rent the tower from top to bottom, and left
+the strongly-built half hanging eleven feet out of the perpendicular, as
+a testimony to future ages.
+
+But it was not of battles or sieges William was thinking, unless it
+might be his own conflict with a difficulty. He was there to examine the
+ancient furnace, with no one to talk or interrupt, and to found his own
+theories thereupon.
+
+In a very short time Mr. Morris had his answer.
+
+'Yes, sir, I think I can undertake your work.'
+
+It was a bold undertaking for a farmer's son, self-taught, and only
+twenty years of age.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[13] An oval wicker boat covered with hide, with only a single seat, as
+used by the ancient Britons, and by the Welsh far into the present
+century.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+A BLIND INSTRUCTOR.
+
+
+Mrs. Edwards did not readily reconcile herself to the loss of her
+faithful serving-maid Ales. Still less readily to the substitution of
+Cate, for, now that she was the wife of Rhys, she took another footing
+on the floor than when she was Cate Griffith, and she allowed no one to
+forget that the farm was left to Rhys by his grandfather's will, and,
+therefore, he was master, the implication being that she was mistress.
+
+Hitherto Mrs. Edwards had been head and front of everything. As she had
+told Mr. Pryse, '_she_ was the farmer.' It was for her to dictate, for
+others to obey.
+
+Now, as she had foreseen, the marriage of Rhys had subverted all that.
+Not that Rhys himself had changed his manner towards his mother, but he
+had long held himself competent to manage the farm without guidance; and
+when there was no capable Ales at hand to anticipate her wishes, and
+even the orders she gave to her own daughter Jonet were apt to be
+disputed and reversed by the young wife, she felt much like a queen
+deposed. She did not, however, surrender her sceptre willingly, but
+pursued her own course as of old. As little was Jonet disposed to take
+orders from her sister-in-law.
+
+The consequent result was confusion, mismanagement, and altercation,
+Cate's voice having suddenly grown shrill and loud.
+
+Of course Rhys took the part of his wife--though dubiously--whilst
+William and Davy enlisted on the side of the mother or Jonet; so that,
+although the oppressor was no more, and the sun of prosperity was rising
+over Brookside Farm, peace spread her weary wings for flight.
+
+Outside, Jonet had an ally in Thomas Williams, and he did his best to
+console her with the prospect of escape to wifehood, and a home of her
+own--a home for which her own distaff and her mother's spinning-wheel
+were busily making preparation.
+
+Hot-tempered William was, however, the first to shake the dust of the
+old home from his well-shod feet.
+
+It was after a sharp altercation over the vexed question of home rule,
+which had left Jonet and his mother both in tears, that he startled them
+by saying--
+
+'Well, well, really, I did never be expecting to turn my back on the old
+place with pleasure. But I am going to Cardiff next week, to be doing
+some building for Mr. Morris; and, look you, it is rejoicing I shall be
+to leave all this noise and contention behind.'
+
+'Going away!' was the breathless, general exclamation, with varying
+addenda.
+
+''Deed, and sure you're welcome! You do be the most obstinate and
+worst-tempered of the whole lot,' from Cate.
+
+'Well, Willem, I'll be sorry to be seeing the back of you; but sure and
+it may perhaps be the best for all,' added Rhys.
+
+'What, going before I do be marrying?' questioned Jonet; 'but I don't
+wonder, anybody would be glad to get away.'
+
+'Going to Cardiff? Oh, my dear boy, my Willem, what ever shall I be
+doing without you? Will you be long away?' cried his mother.
+
+'Sure, and I cannot tell, mother dear. I may never come back to live
+here. And I am loth to leave you behind to be plagued with the
+"continual dropping" of a contentious woman, but I hope to have a farm
+of my own some day for you to manage, look you.'
+
+Peace-loving Davy now put in his word, in lowered tones, to William and
+his mother.
+
+''Deed, and I was be thinking for some time that the farm was not big
+enough to hold Cate and me. But if you be going away, Willem, I shall be
+staying to take care of mother here, till I can be making a home for
+her--yes, yes!' and he wrung William's hand as a token of brotherly love
+and trust.
+
+In a very few days William was on his way to Cardiff, having taken a
+grateful farewell of the vicar on the Sunday; for, although Cardiff was
+little more than nineteen miles away, even by the Caerphilly route, they
+were more than equal to ninety in these steam and railroad times.
+
+His mother parted from him with many rueful misgivings, and much good
+advice to resist the temptations sure to beset him in a wicked seaport
+town, much as an anxious country mother might in these days warn her
+untried son against the countless snares of London. And as she stitched
+her warmest flannel up into shirts for him, and looked up newly-knitted
+hose, her tears fell upon them silently as her prayers.
+
+His personal belongings did not occupy much space. A few tools,
+chap-books and papers, and his entire wardrobe were comfortably packed
+in his father's old goatskin saddle-bags; and Robert Jones, with whom he
+had had several conferences of late on the qualities of stone from
+different quarries, found him a good steady horse which could be left at
+the Angel Inn until Robert claimed it on his next errand to Cardiff.
+
+Robert Jones did him another service, the importance of which neither
+estimated at the time. He recommended him to apply for lodgings to a
+blind baker, named Walter Rosser, whose wife and niece were certain to
+make him comfortable.
+
+The baker's shop was easily found, but there was some little hesitation
+about admitting a stranger as an inmate.
+
+'What caused you to come hither in search of lodgings?' put the blind
+man, with his head on one side as if listening for the answer. 'And what
+may be your business in the town?'
+
+'Robert Jones the peat-cutter did advise me to come here. He said you
+was honest and respectable and book-learned, and that you would be
+dealing fairly with me. And that your wife did be keeping your house as
+sweet and clean as my own mother kept the farm. My business do be to
+build for Mr. John Morris, look you!'
+
+'There's a clear ring in your voice, young man,' said the baker then.
+'And what may be your name?'
+
+'I am Willem Edwards, of Brookside Farm, Eglwysilan,' answered he, with
+proud decision--just a little nettled with the blind man's catechism.
+
+'Oh,' said the other, 'I think I have heard of you before. You did build
+Owen Wynn's flour-mill. Yes, yes, we shall be glad to have you, sir. You
+perceive my infirmity compels me to be particular whom we receive under
+our roof, since I have a young niece here, who has neither father nor
+mother to watch over her, and we are bound to be careful for her sake.'
+
+'Yes, yes, sure, quite right,' assented the young man, after a glance
+beyond the baker and his wife at a blushing damsel in the shade.
+
+Shops at that period were constructed much as are Turkish shops to this
+day. Very few had glazed windows. At night they were closed in by flap
+shutters, divided horizontally; the lower half of which was lowered in
+the daytime to serve as a table or counter for the display of goods, the
+upper half being so hooked up by an iron rod as to serve for a screen
+from sun or rain. The shop doors were similarly divided, the upper half
+hooking up to the low ceiling inside. I have known many such doors in
+country towns in England, some of which are, no doubt, extant to this
+day.
+
+It will be readily understood that shops of this description, however
+small, were dark in the background, and to eyes less keen than
+William's, Elaine Parry's blush would have passed unnoticed. It required
+after-observation to perceive how neat and trim she always was, how
+bashful and retiring, and how quiet and subdued were all her movements;
+what a steadfast light there was in her clear, hazel eyes, and what
+pretty dimples in her cheeks when she smiled.
+
+He only noticed then that she remained quiescent when her uncle cried--
+
+'Come in, sir--come in! I'll mind your horse whilst my good dame shows
+you the room we could let you have.'
+
+Up one or two short flights of stairs with landings turning this way or
+that, then down a step into a short, dark passage or recess containing
+two doors, and he was ushered into a small bedroom, which to him was the
+perfection of order and comfort--nay, luxury. True, there was only a
+narrow truckle bedstead, with a flock bed upon it, dowlas[14] sheets,
+and a dark blue woollen coverlet, but he had never been accustomed to
+anything better; and there was a diamond-paned casement, with a table in
+front, on which was a coarse earthenware basin and ewer, and, hung
+against the wall, a looking-glass about the size of a sheet of
+note-paper, all luxurious intimations that his personal ablutions might
+be conducted in private. Then there was a fireplace in the room--just a
+couple of short iron bars fitted into the brickwork--and beside it, in a
+recess, a piece of furniture which puzzled William extremely. Yet it
+was nothing more than an oaken bureau, the drawers of which Mrs. Rosser
+pulled open to show that they were for his use if he became their
+inmate. The mystery of the turn-down flap for writing, the sliding rests
+to support its weight, and the enclosed pigeon-holes for papers was a
+revelation for the future.
+
+He was almost afraid to ask 'How much?' and was wonderfully gratified to
+find the terms below his calculations, and also that he was expected to
+take his meals with the family.
+
+All that settled, the door across the dark passage was opened, and a
+room with a larger casement was revealed. Here all was equally clean,
+from the well-scrubbed floor to the centre table and tall chairs ranged
+with stiff precision against the walls, whilst a broad seat beneath the
+window held piles of books, and the empty fireplace was adorned with
+large conch shells.
+
+'You can come and sit here if you want to be quiet, and will not make a
+litter,' said Mrs. Rosser. 'We seldom use the room, except when my
+husband is teaching.'
+
+'Teaching?' echoed William curiously.
+
+'Oh yes; don't you know he teaches people to read English?'
+
+'Does what?' he almost gasped.
+
+Mrs. Rosser repeated her words.
+
+'Then Robert Jones has been doing me the best turn he ever did yet, for,
+look you, I've been wanting to learn English reading for many a year.'
+
+How it was possible for a blind man to give such instruction was beyond
+his comprehension. He accepted the statement as one more of the marvels
+he had come across in the baker's comfortable home; and he brought in
+his saddle-bags, and gave his horse in charge to the baker's man, as if
+he were not sure he was wide awake.
+
+He very soon discovered it was just the difference between living in a
+town of some antiquity within reach of a prosperous maritime city like
+Bristol, and dwelling apart among the mountain wilds, shut out from
+general intercourse, and dependent on itinerant packmen for everything
+but home produce.
+
+Even in his meals there was some difference. If he still breakfasted on
+porridge, he was unaccustomed to see meat or eggs on the table daily, or
+to find the oven substituted for the big pot in cookery, and he missed
+the potatoes in which they indulged on the farm.
+
+When the shyness between himself and Elaine Parry, Mrs. Rosser's pretty
+niece, had somewhat worn away, he told her this.
+
+'Oh,' said she, 'they are too dear for us. They are two shillings a
+pound in Cardiff market.'
+
+'No, indeed! Then I will tell Robert Jones. The farmers do be planting;
+they will be cheaper before long, look you.'
+
+And before very long a sack of good potatoes was set down by Robert
+Jones at the baker's door, a present from Brookside Farm.
+
+In the interim William Edwards had not been idle. The site selected for
+the smelting works was just outside Cardiff, and within easy reach of
+the river.
+
+There materials had been collected, and with the sole assistance of John
+Llwyd, he built, in the first instance, a blast-furnace on a small
+scale, tapering like a cone, the ore and fuel for which had to be
+supplied from the top, there being an orifice below from which the
+molten metal would escape in a stream.
+
+An ordinary smith's bellows worked by Llwyd supplied the blast, a good
+fire of peat and charcoal being well alight before the coal and
+broken-up ore were thrown in. It answered fairly for a trial, but once
+alight could not be allowed to cool night or day. But the furnace being
+built and in working order, there was no difficulty in finding men to
+tend and keep it going.
+
+Of course this was an experiment on too small a scale for commercial
+success. At all events William Edwards had mastered the great problem
+how to utilise anthracite or stone-coal for the smelting of iron. It was
+there burning without smoke or flame, and pouring out a thin stream of
+molten metal into the sandy moulds which shaped it into bars, or
+pig-iron.
+
+Mr. Morris clapped his hand on William's shoulder, and congratulated him
+on his achievement.
+
+'Now, Edwards,' said he, 'you must lose no time in putting up another
+furnace or two on a larger scale. Let us show the world what genius and
+perseverance can accomplish.'
+
+'Yes, yes, sir; but I should like to improve on _that_,' pointing to
+what he had already done. 'And before building a larger furnace, I shall
+have to consider how the greater blast is to be sustained. It would be
+too heavy a task for manual labour if we are to keep large quantities
+of this hard coal at fusing heat for corresponding heaps of ore,' was
+the proud young fellow's reply.
+
+'No doubt, no doubt,' acquiesced Mr. Morris. 'But you will be certain to
+manage it in some way or other. And you know you are free to employ any
+workmen or materials you think best. Oh yes; when you set your foot on a
+difficulty you are sure to tread it down.'
+
+'Indeed and in truth, sir, I'm not willing to be beaten, and I don't
+mean to give in till I've conquered the obstacles here, look you,' said
+he, with set and resolute face.
+
+How he overcame the mechanical difficulty I have no data to determine
+after this lapse of time; but I incline to think he brought his friend
+Thomas Williams to construct a wheel, moved either by horse or water
+power, to supply the leverage required to keep the monster forge-bellows
+in motion. Twenty years later Smeaton invented the blowing machine for
+the Carron Foundry, in Scotland; but William Edwards was a mason and
+architect, not a mechanical engineer; and when he had completed his
+large furnace, capable of smelting with the hard stone-coal, he had
+achieved a victory likely to revolutionise the mining and iron-founding
+industries of South Wales--nay, almost to create them. He had saved its
+forest trees from utter annihilation. He had paved the way for Smeaton's
+feet to tread.
+
+Another furnace rose. The ironworks of John Morris extended and found
+occupation and bread for hundreds of workpeople besides those employed
+by himself. Fresh mines of coal and iron were opened around Castel Coch
+and elsewhere. Whole teams of pack-horses, tended by women and boys,
+were ever on the roads, bringing rough ore and coal to the smelters, the
+tinkling bell of each leader, or bell-horse, ringing a prophetic note of
+progression. It was some time before the invention of a low,
+broad-wheeled waggon, drawn by four or six horses, set these old teams
+aside; not, indeed, until something had been done to make the roads more
+practicable. And long before that, fresh shipping sought the old Cardiff
+quays to transport the pig-iron to final manufacturers alike in England
+and across the seas. Morris' smelting works seemed to have wakened the
+stagnant town from the lethargy of ages.
+
+All this was not the growth of a year or two. Eight full years was
+William Edwards working for Mr. Morris, and, whether consciously or not,
+for the advancement and prosperity of his country. Not alone was he
+occupied in erecting furnaces. Fresh workmen and their families required
+fresh homes, and who but William Edwards had the building? And for the
+period they were models. His name and fame as a builder travelled
+farther than his own feet.
+
+Yet it is not to be supposed that he stood still to let the stream of
+progress pass him by, now that he had opened the floodgates wide.
+
+Relays of men fed and tended the glowing furnaces night and day. The
+proud young architect and his contingent did their masonry in daylight
+hours.
+
+That did not mean inert repose or dissipation for him. He made holiday
+when his trial furnace was complete, to visit his mother and brothers
+and take part in his sister Jonet's wedding; but his brain was actively
+at work the whole time, and it was even on that busy occasion he set the
+bridegroom's mechanical brains at work also for mutual benefit.
+
+And whenever there was an interval between one great piece of work and
+another, he hired a horse and went home for a day or two, never without
+some useful or rare gifts for one and all, and never without calling on
+his old friends Robert Jones and Evan Evans by the way.
+
+Those were his only respites from work. His manual labour--for he worked
+alongside his men, and allowed no scamping or shirking--was over at
+dusk. But no sooner had he laid aside his tools, and washed away the
+tokens of his occupation, than he had a book in his hand--generally an
+English book, which he was doing his best to decipher unaided at his
+meals, as a preparation for private lessons, which the blind man gave to
+him by the household hearth, or in his bakehouse, or along with the
+adult class assembling twice a week in his upstairs parlour for English
+reading.
+
+In the bakehouse Rosser kept an alphabet, the separate letters of which
+were shaped and baked out of ordinary dough. And when the eager student
+had mastered the English pronunciation of these, which the blind man
+could distinguish by the touch, he traced syllables and words in his
+plastic medium, until ere long a well-known and well-thumbed book was
+put into the learner's hands to be spelt out, or read aloud, as he
+progressed.
+
+The blind baker was proud of his pupil.
+
+'You are the most promising scholar I ever took in hand,' said he; 'but
+your diligence is unremitting, and failure is impossible.'
+
+Yes, so diligent was he that in consequence of his absorption in his new
+study, Elaine Parry's shyness in his presence gradually wore away, and
+when she heard him stumbling over a word, she would pronounce it for him
+involuntarily, without so much as looking up from her sewing or
+knitting.
+
+Nay, the bashfulness became rather on his side at the betrayal of his
+own ignorance to a young girl, capable, through superior education, of
+correcting his slips and errors. But very soon he accepted her verbal
+hints as a matter of course.
+
+Later, when in a difficulty, he did not scruple to rise from his seat
+and cross the hearth to point out a phrase or passage he was unable to
+translate. And she, perchance, would lay down her work, glance at his
+book, and look calmly up in his face as she gave the true reading in a
+clear, firm voice.
+
+[Illustration: ELAINE PARRY.]
+
+After a time, for easier reference, he brought his own seat near to
+hers, so that he might have her assistance without rising. And, although
+his dark-brown head and her light one were thus frequently drawn close
+together, his one idea had such thorough possession of him, that his
+single-minded desire for knowledge disarmed the seeming familiarity of
+all obtrusiveness.
+
+Certainly, neither he nor Elaine had the slightest conception that
+anything was being taught or learned other than the King's English.
+
+She was too retiring and well behaved to thrust herself into the
+prominent notice of a stranger, so that after that first general
+impression that the baker's niece was a pretty and tidy young woman, he
+scarcely bestowed a second thought upon her.
+
+Mrs. Rosser's astounding intimation that her husband taught Welshmen to
+read English had swallowed up all minor considerations, just as the
+River Taff swallowed up all sorts of tributary streams in its course to
+the sea.
+
+Then, apart from his lingual studies, his furnace-building was ever on
+his mind. It was a very great and novel undertaking, and the whole force
+of his intelligence was brought to bear upon it.
+
+So that, although she moved before him in her daily occupations, and
+ministered to his necessities at meal-times, it was just as if a sister
+had been before his eyes continually. Certainly, she always wore shoes
+and stockings, and, on Sundays, the very set of her cloak and tall hat,
+and the border of white linen cap, had a grace and fitness most
+becoming. And she carried her English prayer-book to church so
+unobtrusively, and found her places so readily, he was bound to notice
+that; but _there_ some envy blunted the edge of admiration.
+
+Her influence was that of summer dew on vegetation. It refreshes
+insensibly and imperceptibly. Had she bustled about noisily, had there
+been any discord between her and her aunt, it would have arrested his
+attention with the jarring effect of a thunderstorm.
+
+As it was, she became part and parcel of his daily life, and it was not
+until he had been about three years in Cardiff that a slight illness
+which kept her in her own room for a week or ten days roused him to the
+consciousness how much he was indebted to her for the comfort and
+brightness of his surroundings.
+
+However intelligent a companion Walter Rosser might be--and he could
+talk both of the world and of books, having known both before blindness
+set in--he lacked just the touch of kindly appreciation so gratifying to
+the self-esteem of the rising young builder after years of
+home-snubbing; the word or two of discriminating opinion his niece gave
+so thoughtfully whenever doubts and difficulties beset him in the
+execution of his plans; for all was not fair sailing, clever as he might
+be, and there were times when he was glad of a sympathetic ear.
+
+He was restless and uneasy the whole time she lay ill upstairs, and was
+ready to ransack the town for tea, oranges, or any other over-sea luxury
+she might fancy. And he was never the same to her, or she to him, after
+she was back by the household fire, paler, but oh! how infinitely
+dearer!
+
+The touch of his horny hand, and the softened tones of his voice, said
+more than his commonplace words of greeting: ''Deed, Elaine, it's right
+glad we are to have you downstairs again. We have been missing you so
+terribly.'
+
+And there was more than the tremulousness of physical weakness in her
+low reply: 'Yes, and I am glad to be here. It is miserable to be shut up
+away from you all, giving aunt and you so much trouble; but we may bear
+with illness when friends are so kind.'
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[14] Dowlas, a coarse kind of linen.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+BRIDGE-BUILDING.
+
+
+It so happened that when William Edwards had taken his first holiday, in
+1741, to be groomsman at the marriage of his sister Jonet with his
+friend Thomas Williams, that he had found Caerphilly--nay, all
+Eglwysilan--in a state of ferment, owing to the exciting presence in
+their midst of the noted preacher, the Rev. George Whitfield, for many
+years the colleague of the Rev. John Wesley, and only recently separated
+from him through doctrinal difference.
+
+They had alike left their pulpits in the Church to go preaching and
+teaching throughout the land, in the high-ways and by-ways, denouncing
+the vice and folly and sin then rampant, calling sinners to repentance,
+admonishing their hearers to lead simple, pure, and Christ-like lives,
+and preaching the acceptable year of the Lord, at the same time holding,
+as it were, the flaming sword of God's wrath over the impenitent.
+
+It should here be told that, finding his dear mother made light of by
+Cate, and set aside on the farm so very recently her own, William had
+himself taken the first opportunity that presented itself to remove her
+and Jonet to a farm he had acquired in the Aber Valley--not far from his
+friend Thomas Williams--a farm for his mother and Davy to manage between
+them.
+
+His road hither, of course, lay through Caerphilly; and after having
+left the town behind him nearly two miles, he was surprised to find a
+concourse of people in a field by the wayside, not far from his own
+home, listening to a man in a clerical gown and bands, who stood on a
+pile of stones, and, with impassioned voice and gesture, besought his
+hearers to 'flee from the wrath to come.' His text had evidently been:
+'To-day if ye will hear His voice, harden not your heart;'[15] and he
+hammered at the 'to-day' until he drove it into the hearts of many
+around him. Women wept, men fell on their knees and called out aloud as
+emotion swayed them, and William sat like a statue until the last word
+was spoken and the preacher, worn out with his own fervour, turned to
+depart along with some friends of his own.
+
+William, like scores beside him, had gone to church and read his Bible
+as a duty; had learned the catechism the good vicar drilled into the
+youth of his flock; but beyond that his religion did not go very deep.
+
+George Whitfield's sermon, on which he had come so suddenly, was like
+the bow drawn at a venture, the sharp arrow from which smote the King of
+Israel between the joints of his armour; for so it pierced the heart of
+the young man, whose very thought of late had been of furnace-building
+and of English study.
+
+The face, the voice, the manner of the earnest preacher haunted him no
+less than his awakening words. And when Davy, who had been also a
+listener, laid his hand upon the horse's bridle, and spoke to him, he
+started like one aroused from a dream.
+
+To suit general convenience--the old vicar's included--it had been
+arranged that Jonet and Thomas Williams should be married at St.
+Martin's, Caerphilly--then only a chapel-of-ease to Eglwysilan; and
+there a fresh surprise awaited William Edwards, for when, the following
+day, the united wedding party from Brookside and Aber dashed
+helter-skelter along the road to the church, in their race to catch the
+bride, he beheld a gravely-attired procession on foot, somewhat ahead of
+them, proceeding calmly in the same direction. And, when their own
+panting steeds had been left behind at a convenient inn, he observed
+that, of the more decorous bridal party entering the church porch, the
+bridegroom, a man of some twenty-seven years, was no other than that
+same Rev. George Whitfield, whose words had burnt themselves into his
+breast, never to be effaced, and his bride, Elizabeth James, whom he
+knew by sight.
+
+He could scarcely keep his eyes off the man, or his attention on the
+business before him. Yet he could not fail to notice that the aged
+vicar, who was growing feeble and tremulous, was apparently conscious he
+had no ordinary couple before him to unite in holy matrimony, and
+performed the ceremony for both parties with unusual impressiveness,
+undisturbed by the sounds of giggling and tittering in the rear.
+
+Such giggling and tittering were of common occurrence, as was the rough
+struggle for the first kiss of the newly-made bride, and the Rev. John
+Smith raised no voice in rebuke or protest when such a rush was made
+towards Jonet.
+
+Not so the evangelistic bridegroom. No sooner were their names signed in
+the register, than with his bride upon his arm, he quitted the church.
+Then, surrendering her to the care of the sedate groomsman, he mounted a
+tombstone, and with uplifted hand and voice demanded attention.
+
+So unwonted was the proceeding, that even the most hilarious paused and
+drew near out of mere curiosity; but when they left the chapelyard they
+had received such a lecture on the reverence due to the sacred place, on
+the solemnity of the ceremony they were present to witness, and on the
+import for time and eternity of the vows there made in the sight of
+God--such a lecture as few of those there assembled were likely to
+forget.
+
+At its close, William, withdrawing from his companions, walked up to Mr.
+Whitfield and thanked him heartily for his discourses, both there and
+the previous afternoon. 'You have roused me from spiritual apathy and
+carelessness into which I never shall sink again,' he said, with
+characteristic decision. 'And should you come to Cardiff before you
+leave South Wales, you may count on me as an awakened hearer.'
+
+The preacher's influence did not soon die away. William had other
+opportunities for joining in the services led by the enthusiastic
+preacher, and in his zeal prevailed on the blind baker and his niece to
+bear him company. Rosser's infirmity threw him much within himself.
+Elaine was naturally of a serious cast, and the eloquence of the
+powerful revivalist moved them both greatly.
+
+This was long before the girl's illness to which I have already
+referred. But as William and her uncle conversed together on the great
+truths they had heard so powerfully expounded, or joined in household
+prayer, there can be no doubt a link was forged and strengthened to draw
+the young people closer together, however insensibly, than if they had
+spent their leisure in light chatter and frivolous fooling. Yet nothing
+had been said in the course of years of either love or marriage.
+
+Meanwhile William had made himself conversant with English. Then, at the
+instance of Rosser, he procured the works of Sir Isaac Newton, and
+devoted himself to the study of geometry and kindred sciences with the
+assiduity of a man bent on success.
+
+Barely had he completed his furnaces for Mr. John Morris when proposals
+for like work came to him from other quarters, offering him most liberal
+and gratifying terms.
+
+Then, and not before, did he open out all his heart to Elaine, and,
+proud of the distinction it implied, pressed her to become his wife
+before he closed his engagement with his first patron, or entered upon
+a fresh one which would remove him to a distance.
+
+He had come upon Elaine in the twilight as she stood behind the
+flap-counter of her uncle's open shop, with a few unsold loaves upon the
+board, and, elate with the prospect before him, never doubted she who
+had grown so dear to his heart would gladly put her hand in his to share
+his rising fortunes.
+
+He drew her closer to him as he stood beside her in the shade, and met
+with no repulse, for she owned she knew his worth and loved him dearly,
+but his soaring spirit drooped its wings under a sudden check.
+
+'Nay, nay, dear William,' she said, amid slowly falling tears, 'it
+cannot be. How I shall miss you, and grieve for you in your absence,
+there is no telling; but though I can marry no one else, I cannot leave
+my good uncle and aunt now they are getting into years. They have been
+all the father and mother I have known.'
+
+'But, my dearest Elaine, do not daughters leave their parents to become
+wives? I never expected such an answer from _you_. Surely, when I took
+that farm in the Aber Valley years ago, had I no deeper meaning than to
+make my mother and David more comfortable? Had you no suspicion that one
+day I should want to place my wife there, and make a home for both of
+us?'
+
+Her tears dropped on the strong hand that held hers in its clasp, but
+she answered never a word.
+
+'Elaine, dear Elaine,' he went on, 'I can enlarge the homestead, and
+extend the farm lands, so that your uncle and aunt could live with us
+all under one roof, if you will but consent.'
+
+'Don't, don't, William dear,' she sobbed. 'It is very, very kind of you,
+but it would never answer. You must not even suggest such a thing to my
+uncle. He is proud of his double calling as baker and teacher. How often
+have you heard him say with pride "he provided food for both body and
+mind; and no man with both his eyes could do more"? No, you would wound
+his self-dependence. I honour your good heart, but--I cannot leave
+them.'
+
+'Is there no one else can take your place, Elaine? How am I to leave you
+here alone?'
+
+She shook her head. 'They have no one but their married daughter in
+Bristol. What sort of a wife should I make if I failed in my duty to
+them? Besides, a wife just now would only cripple your freedom of
+action. We are both young enough to wait.'
+
+'Young enough if willing.' His obstinate temper was rising.
+
+'If it be God's will, it should be our will.' As she spoke she withdrew
+from his clasp.
+
+'Look you, Elaine!' he exclaimed, with something of his old passion.
+'The more a string is stretched, the sooner it breaks.' And away he went
+in high displeasure, leaving her standing there faint with her own
+effort at self-suppression.
+
+It did not rest there. He was persistent. She was firm. And he had
+neither won her consent to marry, nor come to terms for the construction
+of fresh smelting works, when another project was on foot, which was to
+make or mar the man.
+
+I have said that roads were defective, and that bridges were needed to
+span rivers which cut off communication between town and town, county
+and county, and shut up the vast mineral wealth of South Wales.
+
+Herbert, the new Lord of Cardiff, had made the Castle his residence, the
+discoveries in connection with Mr. Pryse having determined him to see
+with his own eyes, and to delegate irresponsible authority to no one. He
+strengthened the hands of Mr. Morris in his efforts to utilise the iron
+and coal of the county, and to provide remunerative work for the
+depressed population. And he did what he could to improve, not merely
+the decaying town, but the rest of his vast possessions in
+Glamorganshire. He soon became keenly alive to the necessity for better
+communication with his property on the other side of the Taff than that
+of ferry, or ford, or coracle.
+
+In this he was by no means alone.
+
+Other landowners, magistrates, and men who saw fortunes buried beneath
+the soil, or losing half their value upon it for want of accessible
+markets, grumbled and growled on their own hearths, or to each other
+when they chanced to meet, until the discontent became so general that
+the heads of the county met in conclave at the Angel Inn in Cardiff,
+and decided on the erection of a stone bridge over the treacherous Taff.
+
+Then came the question, 'Who should be the builder?'
+
+'There is no better builder whatever in all South Wales than Mr. William
+Edwards,' said Mr. Morris, with decision.
+
+'Indeed, and that's the truth,' came simultaneously from various
+speakers.
+
+'But he has never erected a bridge, and he is so very young,' put in
+another dubiously. 'It will be a work of difficulty. We should engage an
+architect of established repute.'
+
+'He never put up a mill until he built Owen Wynn's flour-mill, and he
+never put up a furnace until he built mine,' replied Mr. Morris; 'and
+you all know what those are. But, young as he is, you may take my word
+for it he will undertake nothing he is not competent to carry out, and
+he is certain to accomplish whatever he has set his mind upon.'
+
+A good deal of heated argument followed this speech.
+
+The former speaker adhered to his suggestion that 'some one of more
+eminence should be engaged--such a man, for instance, as Mr. James
+Gibbs, an architect of note.'
+
+His lordship shook his head. 'Yes; Mr. Gibbs is an ecclesiastical
+architect of note, but you require a bridge, not a church, or a'--
+
+'What? That old _Scotchman_!' burst from impatient lips. 'Did he ever
+build a bridge? And what should a Scotchman know of our Welsh rivers?
+And what would he charge?'
+
+That suggestion of an exorbitant cost virtually settled the business
+before Mr. Morris rose again, and with a wave of the hand to calm the
+patriotic hubbub, remarked--
+
+'I think, gentlemen, you will have to fall back on Mr. William Edwards.
+He is confessedly the best builder in all South Wales--a practical
+builder, not a mere architect. He was but a boy about nine years of age
+when he told me his father had been drowned in crossing the Eglwysilan
+ford, and that when he was a big man he would build a bridge there to
+save other lives. Believe me, he would put his heart into the work. And
+_he_ is not an alien.'
+
+On the following day, September 16, 1746, three gentlemen, dressed in
+deep vests, full-skirted coats, and three-cornered hats, more or less in
+conformity with English wear, presented themselves at the baker's shop,
+and asked to see Mr. Edwards.
+
+They were shown upstairs into the class-room parlour by Elaine, and then
+she tapped gently at William's door opposite in the dark passage, and
+told him he was wanted.
+
+He was at that moment seated, pen in hand, in front of his bureau-desk,
+with a sheet of paper before him, on which he had begun to indite his
+acceptance of the smelter's proposal.
+
+Who could be wanting him?
+
+Down went his quill; he thrust his arms into the short-tailed coat hung
+over his chair back, gave himself a shake, and in less than two minutes
+he was face to face with Mr. Morris and two strangers, to whom he was
+formally introduced as _Mr._ William Edwards. They were magistrates, and
+men of note in the county, deputed to lay before him the project for
+bridging over the Taff, and ascertain his willingness to undertake its
+construction.
+
+Mr. Morris had placed himself in the broad window seat, his friends had
+drawn a couple of the high-backed chairs between the window and the
+table to bring them closer together, and as William stood there with the
+full light of the setting sun upon his somewhat square features, they
+could perceive him start and rest one strong nervous hand upon the
+table, whilst his broad nostrils quivered, his bright clear eyes lit up,
+and his face flushed, only to whiten under the excitement of their
+proposal, and the remembrance of the unfinished letter upon his desk.
+
+There could be no second thought of his acceptance.
+
+'Willing to undertake it, gentlemen?' he said breathlessly. 'Competent?
+It has been my dream from boyhood; though I owe the first suggestion to
+a jesting hint from Mr. Morris. Stay, I will show you.'
+
+In less than three minutes he had fetched from the bureau in the other
+room--where he left a crumpled-up letter--several drawings of bridges
+in all stages of architectural finish, from the first rude conception of
+his youth, to the riper studies of manhood.
+
+By the time his contract with Mr. Morris expired, his design for the
+proposed bridge had been considered and approved, as also the site,
+close upon the Eglwysilan ford, midway between Merthyr Tydvil and
+Cardiff, so as to unite the already beaten road.
+
+He was elate and buoyant over the trust reposed in him; although Rhys,
+his mother, Davy, and other friends had been called upon to enter into
+bonds for the fulfilment of his contract, since he was to be paid as the
+work proceeded.
+
+The intending smelter, desirous to secure his services, consented to
+wait until he was again at liberty.
+
+The young architect's pride had but one drawback. He could not shake
+Elaine's fidelity to her uncle and aunt. She would not desert them in
+their old age.
+
+'It will be better for you to go to this great work unfettered by a
+wife,' she argued bravely.
+
+But he would not see the personal sacrifice she made, and went off at
+last in a huff.
+
+'This new business will be his solace,' she said. 'I must be content to
+do my duty, and leave the rest to God.'
+
+And neither her aunt nor her blind uncle knew the temptation she had
+resisted for their sakes, though they thought her quieter than before.
+
+She was right. His new business left William little leisure for looking
+back.
+
+He had gone over to Bristol to engage masons, in addition to those he
+had already trained, before he finally took leave.
+
+Then there was no running back. His first duty was to erect huts or
+houses for his workpeople and their families; and he took care they were
+such as should be of service when the temporary purpose was served.
+
+He had long before made John Llwyd his foreman--a good deputy on whom he
+could rely; just as he could depend on his old friend Robert Jones for
+the best of stone from the very best local quarries, or for his sand and
+lime. For the carriage of other matters to and fro he fell back on
+Robert's active young partner Hughes, for whom the peat-cutter's niece
+had jilted easy-going Davy.
+
+But ere the foundations of the bridge were laid and firm, the builder
+had engaged his brother-in-law, Thomas Williams, to supply the wooden
+frames on which his arches were to be fitted and adjusted. And so, with
+trustworthy coadjutors like these, the work went on steadily.
+
+At first he had to battle with the deceitful river; but he and his men
+watched the skies and did their best to prevent disaster, though more
+than one occurred.
+
+But the resolution of their master seemed infused into the men. If there
+was any doubt or hazard, he took the tools himself, and wrought until
+they were ashamed to hang back.
+
+Though he had a farm of his own but two miles or so away, and his
+brother's farm was close at hand, he occupied one of the new cottages
+along with Llwyd, and so was always on the spot.
+
+Besides that, he fared almost as his men fared. If a labourer's wife or
+child fell sick he helped them from his own stores or pocket; and his
+men worked all the better for his thoughtful kindness.
+
+His bridge-building had brought quite a colony upon the spot, not merely
+of the workpeople, but of others, who found they had money to spend and
+wants to be supplied.
+
+Soon he become conscious of another want. The Rev. John Smith, the kind
+old vicar, had died full of years shortly after Jonet's marriage, and
+the new vicar did not seem to recognise the strangers as part of his
+flock. So William, finding the non-observance of the Sabbath led to
+disorder, called the people round him, and from the Druids'
+rocking-stone read out portions of Scripture to them, now and then
+venturing on expositions of his own.
+
+So the weeks and the seasons rounded until at the end of two years there
+stood a fine three-arched bridge across the river, to be opened with
+loud acclaim and rejoicing--a bridge the excited guarantors pronounced
+firm and solid enough to stand as surely for seventy years as seven,
+the period for which its stability was guaranteed.
+
+'Indeed!' exclaimed the proud young builder. 'It is more likely to stand
+firm for seven hundred years!'
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[15] Psalm xcv. 7, 8.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+PONT-Y-PRIDD.
+
+
+It was a glorious day for the self-taught architect. The hanging woods
+on either bank of the river held nearly as many spectators as trees,
+whilst along the narrow roads came a motley multitude on foot or
+horseback, or in cumbrous, top-heavy leather carriages, drawn by four
+horses (less for state than necessity), poor as well as rich having
+assembled from all parts to witness the opening of the new bridge that
+was to do so much for the county.
+
+'To witness my triumph,' William Edwards phrased it. But then, too much
+diffidence was not the family failing. And, for a self-taught man, it
+_was_ a triumph.
+
+There was no room for two carriages to pass abreast, but the few there
+assembled crossed alternately, the Viscount's prancing horses leading
+the way. Then there was a rush of people, mounted and on foot; horses,
+ponies, mules, and asses scampering across pell-mell in such wild
+confusion and entanglement, amid shouts and untranslatable cries, as
+certainly tested the stability of the structure. And such
+congratulations greeted the builder as were calculated to turn more
+seasoned heads than his.
+
+Davy, full of brotherly pride and affection, had brought his mother on a
+pillion behind him; and there, surrounded by her children and her
+grandchildren, the old dame, overcome by her emotion in contrasting the
+present with the past, and witnessing the great work of her son and his
+reception by the gentry, fairly sobbed aloud, the big tears rolling down
+her tanned and wrinkled cheeks.
+
+'Name o' goodness, mother, I don't be knowing what you have got to cry
+for, whatever. People do be looking at you!' remarked Rhys curtly, on a
+hint from Cate.
+
+''Deed, I do be crying for joy. I never expected to be seeing a day like
+this.'
+
+'Do leave mother alone, Rhys,' quickly remonstrated Davy in an
+undertone. 'Her heart do be full, and it must run over, look you.'
+
+Evan Evans and Ales stood by, dressed in their Sunday best for the great
+occasion, a newly-breeched boy by the hand.
+
+'I do be wishing Jane Edwards would not be washing the new bridge with
+her tears, Evan--'deed, I do,' whispered Ales to him.
+
+'Ah, yes, it do be a bad baptism,' he echoed, shaking his head, which
+had been crammed with superstition on shipboard. 'And I do be hoping the
+rain will keep off, for the clouds be gathering over Garth Mountain,
+look you.'
+
+The rain did keep off for two or three hours, until long after the
+hand-shaking and speech-making were over, and the great people had
+dispersed, and all who had not stayed behind to feast were on their way
+homewards, thankful they would be able in future to cross the river
+dry-shod and out of danger, whatever the hour or the weather, the
+'cleverness' of the Widow Edwards' son being on every tongue.
+
+That son, however, had been surfeited with praise, and was moving
+amongst the crowds in irritable reaction seeking for some one he failed
+to find--some one whose approbation would have o'ertopped the highest.
+
+At last, when he was ready to bite his lips with vexation, a boy, who
+came riding hastily from the Cardiff Road, put a letter in his hand, and
+lingered as if waiting for an answer.
+
+The writing was Elaine's.
+
+The letter was torn open impatiently.
+
+Only a few blotted words:--
+
+
+     'DEAR FRIEND,--We hear your meritorious work is complete, and send
+     you our heartfelt greetings; but we are in great trouble, for Uncle
+     Rosser had a fit last night, and has not spoken since. Aunt is full
+     of grief. She has sent to Bristol for my cousin, for the apothecary
+     says uncle cannot live. You will pardon our absence to-day; and
+     believe me, your sincere well-wisher,
+
+     'ELAINE PARRY.'
+
+
+Two hours later he had left the feasters and was in the saddle, muffled
+in a thick riding-coat, speeding on to Cardiff through driving rain and
+the darkening shades of evening.
+
+When he drew rein at the baker's door he was too late for all but
+consolation. The blind man had opened his long-closed eyes on the
+glorious wonders of eternity.
+
+Never had Elaine felt so much the need of his strong arm and
+self-reliant individuality as then, in their overwhelming affliction.
+His unexpected arrival touched a sensitive chord and broke down the
+barriers between them. She sprang towards him, and clung to him weeping,
+as she had never done before.
+
+Amazement checked the flow of Mrs. Rosser's tears for the moment; and
+when he put out his hand to grasp hers, she too felt there was a strong
+friend to rely on in their extremity.
+
+Then was it first observed that he was wringing wet; and in hospitable
+cares for the long absent, the first acuteness of pain was something
+blunted.
+
+After that, as if he had been Mrs. Rosser's own son, he took all
+miserable details off their feminine hands. It was he, too, who met the
+daughter--Mrs. Elton--and her Bristolian husband on their arrival, and
+broke the distressing intelligence to them.
+
+Death involves changes. No sooner was the dead laid in the earth than
+the desirability of the widow's future residence with her daughter was
+openly discussed. Consideration for Elaine appeared the only obstacle to
+the plan.
+
+'I am quite willing to make a home for my mother-in-law,' said Mr. Elton
+in private to Mr. Edwards, with a show of self-complacent liberality,
+much as though he patted himself on the back for a praiseworthy
+sacrifice, ignoring the savings of years likely to bear her company;
+'but I cannot consent to burden myself with the young woman. And she
+cannot really expect it. She is no relation of mine or my wife's. She
+must look out for a situation. She quite blocks the way to an amicable
+adjustment of affairs,' he added irritably.
+
+William speedily removed _that_ block out of their way.
+
+'Do not trouble yourself about Elaine, sir,' put in William stiffly.
+'There has been a situation waiting for her over two years.'
+
+Mr. Elton opened his eyes. 'Indeed!'
+
+'Yes, sir. Two years back I pressed her to become my honoured _wife_,
+but her strong, sense of duty constrained her to repress her own
+inclinations, and send me away wifeless rather than desert her aunt and
+uncle in their old age. You can adjust your affairs irrespective of
+Elaine Parry, I can assure you. A good home and a loving welcome await
+her.'
+
+Mr. Elton was snubbed, and looked it.
+
+In less than three months there was a very quiet wedding at Cardiff, and
+Elaine went away with her husband to his farm, midway between his bridge
+and the ruined Castle of Caerphilly, where his old mother and Davy
+lived, within easy reach of Jonet and her husband. The few houses have
+multiplied since then into a village that bears the name of Aber.
+
+At first old Mrs. Edwards felt as if she was to be a second time
+deposed. And she expected Elaine's town ways would clash with her
+country ones. But when she found that Elaine deferred to her as she had
+done to her own aunt, and was desirous to be instructed in all that
+pertained to her duties on the farm, there was no word too good for her
+'clever son William's clever wife.'
+
+Then she could already knit and spin, and had brought her own wheel, as
+well as a shelf of books, and something in hard cash, so that, as Davy
+said, she was 'quite an acquisition on the farm.'
+
+William had built the house according to his enlarged ideas of domestic
+comfort. There were two storeys, and notwithstanding the very heavy tax
+on glass, it shone in every window, and these were of useful size. He
+had brought home along with his wife the bureau he had found so useful
+for his papers, and kept them and his books in a room set apart for
+himself.
+
+With the completion of the bridge, he abandoned to John Llwyd the
+cottage he had erected on the river's side, his new furnace work being
+within sufficiently accessible distance of the farm, so long as he could
+leave his efficient foreman on the spot, and his workmen also. He was
+glad then he had erected permanent and commodious houses for the men,
+instead of temporary huts, since there was still employment for them
+all. Explorations for iron and coal were going on in the vicinity. These
+created a fresh demand for labour, and a corresponding demand for roofs
+to shelter the newcomers.
+
+As he beheld the new colony of labourers and managers rising up, as it
+were, under his auspices, his heart swelled with pride and
+self-sufficient inflation.
+
+'Ah, yes,' he would say to his wife, 'this is all my doing. I told Rhys
+I would be the greater man. Yes, he must own it now, if he would not
+then. Look at my wonderful bridge. It will stand for ever.'
+
+He was saying something of the kind one morning, when his first-born, a
+boy he had named David after his brother, was about eighteen months old.
+He had the child on his knee at the time.
+
+Elaine had a shuddering dread upon her whenever she heard his boastful
+words.
+
+'Yes, William dear,' she said soberly, 'we know your skill is great, but
+I wish you would not boast of the stability of your bridge so often. We,
+as well as the bridge, are in the hands of the Almighty!'
+
+He put the child down hastily and rose to his feet. 'Surely, Elaine, you
+are not going to join the croakers? Rhys told me the other day, "Not to
+hold my head so high, for pride was sure to have a fall." Sure, I have a
+right to be proud if any one has.'
+
+'_If?_' murmured Elaine under her breath; but he caught the doubtful
+word, and, snatching at his hat, strode out of the house angrily.
+
+A thick mantle of snow covered hill and valley, against which the
+whitewashed houses looked grey and dingy.
+
+'It do be thawing fast,' said Davy to him as they met at the gate, he
+with a spade over his shoulder. 'I do hope the rain will be keeping off
+till the snow be all gone. But I don't be liking the looks of the clouds
+in the north-west.'
+
+'Why not?' questioned William sharply.
+
+Davy hesitated. 'Well, if the rain do come upon the melting snow, we
+shall be having heavy floods.'
+
+'Well, and what then?' snappily.
+
+''Deed, and I do be always thinking of the bridge when the floods come.'
+
+'Pouf! the bridge is safe if a hundred floods come.' And on he went,
+ruffled, but wrapped in self-opinionated vanity. He had forgotten George
+Whitfield and his Master then.
+
+Nevertheless, he went to take a look at the bridge and the river, on his
+way to the new ironworks, where his first furnace was already at work.
+
+'Ah, well,' he thought, 'the water _is_ high; but, pouf! that is no
+flood.'
+
+Towards afternoon a thin rain began to fall and liquefy the melting
+snow. As the men were leaving work, Llwyd came up to him with an anxious
+face and whispered, 'Master, the river do be desperately full, and if'--
+
+William looked as if he could have struck his faithful monitor to the
+earth.
+
+Yes, the river was rising and racing through the three arches with the
+swiftness of a torrent, surcharged with hay and straw, brushwood and
+mould, washed downward in its course, but they swept well under the
+bold archways and swirled away in eddies beyond.
+
+'There can be no danger. Those piers are firm enough,' he muttered, as
+if to convince himself as well as Llwyd.
+
+Dusk came down and blotted out the scene. In turning away he came upon
+Rhys, whose gloomy face it was well he could not see.
+
+Llwyd and Davy too were there, with other watchers who had helped to
+rear the bridge.
+
+'Tell Elaine I shall stay with Llwyd to-night,' said William to Davy. It
+was his first note of apprehension. Towards midnight he said, 'If the
+rain ceases there can be no danger.'
+
+But the rain did not cease. As the night fled and the morning hours
+advanced, the winds came howling and tearing like demons down the Taff
+Valley, driving the pelting rain before them in a mad hurricane,
+fighting for mastery alike with tall green pines and the bare boughs of
+elms and gnarled oaks.
+
+Gradually, as lapping waters undermined rocks and rugged banks, already
+loosened by frost and melting snows, along many a swollen mountain
+stream the surging torrent bore down their tributary reeds and shrubs
+and earth, along with riven boughs and uptorn trees, that beat like
+battering-rams against the good stone piers, holding their trust so
+sturdily. Then, eddying, the mighty current of the mocking Taff swung
+the tall fir-trees round and barred the still open arches cross-wise,
+one by one. Here, as in a net, the lamentable wreckage of the moors, of
+ruined cots and devastated farms, was caught and built up into a dam the
+turbid water could neither pass nor wash away. And rising, still rising,
+rising swifter than the rising sun, like a gigantic monster playing with
+boulder stones for bowls, the resistless river hammered with them
+against the parapet, and beat it in. Then, with a tumultuous roar as of
+triumph, and a deafening crash that startled sleepers in their beds more
+than a mile distant, the bridge that was built for centuries was swept
+away into irreparable ruin.
+
+A shriek, as of mortal horror, rose as an echo from the crowded banks.
+The three brothers and their friends looked in each other's whitened
+faces as the cost of the catastrophe cut keenly into their souls.
+
+Rhys groaned aloud.
+
+'There does never have been such an awful flood since I was born; no
+masonry whatever could be standing against it,' cried grey-headed Owen
+Griffith, as he leant upon his staff to bear up against the wind.
+
+He had seen the darkening glances cast on the luckless architect, and
+interposed to spare him the reproaches of coarse tongues.
+
+'Keep that consolation for those who have run no risk. It will not be
+saving Cate and the rest from ruin and beggary, through this braggart
+brother of mine and his bridge,' burst from ungovernable Rhys.
+
+'It may _save_ me and you all from ruin,' retorted William defiantly. 'I
+have discovered what a flood can do, and what must be guarded against.
+Before the term of our guarantee expires, I will span this river with a
+bridge no flood shall wash away. 'Deed I will.'
+
+A crowd had gathered. There were mocking voices heard beside Rhys'. A
+quarrel and a tumult threatened; for fierce as the war of the elements
+was the tempest raging in the breasts of men who had been closest
+friends.
+
+'Come away,' cried placable Davy, linking his arm within William's, and
+looking round him. 'When the Lord do be speaking men should be silent.
+Yes, and before the breath of His nostrils the best man's handiwork will
+go down, look you.' And whispering something to his baited brother of
+'home' and 'Elaine,' he drew him peaceably away.
+
+_He_ had no word of reproach, though he had staked the savings of his
+life, equally with Rhys, and his forbearance silenced others, then and
+afterwards.
+
+Nor did any reproaches or taunts meet William at his own fireside.
+Rumour had run fleetfooted before them with the disastrous tidings. The
+shock had thus been anticipated. Clasping arms and sympathetic words
+alone awaited him. 'It is the will of God,' said both mother and wife;
+'it is useless to rebel.'
+
+Strange to say, William Edwards was apparently the least cast down of
+any. In a day or two he had recovered much of his elasticity. He showed
+a brave face to friends and envious foes, and maintained that no man
+should forfeit his guarantee. He would replace the wrecked bridge with a
+better.
+
+There were men who sneered; there were more who sympathised, for the
+rebuilding would be at his own cost, and would sweep away all his former
+gains. Yet all friends did not desert him. Mr. Morris and the Viscount
+defended him against malicious attacks on 'unqualified pretenders.' No
+one could deny the vehement pressure of the terrible flood.
+
+His newer plan, a bridge of _a single arch_, and of a span
+unprecedented, was seen and approved.
+
+Workmen were not far to seek. Almost with the subsidence of the waters
+labourers were at work removing the still upstanding remains of the old
+piers, the tenacity of the masonry giving the undaunted builder fresh
+hope.
+
+On fresh foundations another bridge arose, Jonet's husband marvelling at
+the measurements supplied for the wooden framework.
+
+'Yes,' said William, whose pride and self-assumption rose as he surveyed
+the magnificent proportions of his bridge, 'I defy any flood to beat
+that down. Look at its breadth and height! Any volume of water could
+sweep under that arch! Yes, indeed, if it brought half a forest down
+with it. The piers were the mistake before, Thomas.'
+
+''Deed, yes!' assented the other.
+
+The keystone of the arch had been laid; time had been given for cement
+to harden; the wooden framework of the arch was being removed when this
+was said; only the parapets were wanting, and on those the men were
+beginning.
+
+Another day the last scrap of timber was gone. Rhys had come down
+sullenly to the water's edge, weighted by his responsibility, and too
+doubtful of his brother's skill to give even his perseverance credit.
+There he found Jonet and Elaine, each with an infant in her arms. A few
+idlers stood staring and gaping under the trees on the steep banks.
+
+All at once, with no more premonitory shock than a slight tremulous
+motion under foot that scared the working masons away, the keystone of
+the arch shot up into the air like a ball; the centre of the arch seemed
+to rise bodily and press upwards like an inverted V, as if impelled by
+superhuman force from the sides; there was a report as of a tremendous
+gunpowder explosion, a blinding shower of dust and flying stones
+whirling in mid air, a wide gap where a noble structure had been five
+minutes before.
+
+Draw a curtain over the scene of the collapse. Close the ears to the
+taunts and mockery, the scorn and derisive epithets, which assail the
+unfortunate architect wheresoever he goes. Everywhere, save under his
+own roof, where wife and mother and Davy combined to shield him. But
+only his wife can enter into his feelings, and alleviate his bitter
+humiliation. Where he is weak, she is strong, and her very touch is
+healing.
+
+[Illustration: ONLY HIS WIFE CAN ENTER INTO HIS FEELINGS, AND ALLEVIATE
+HIS BITTER HUMILIATION.--_See page 327._]
+
+Let us follow him into his little private room, and find him on his
+knees acknowledging in all humility his self-sufficient dependence on
+himself, his proud and confident trust in his own skill, his
+forgetfulness of the Lord, omnipotent alike to create and to destroy,
+from whom he derived whatever mental superiority he possessed, who had
+led him step by step to success, who had spoken to him by the warning
+voice of George Whitfield, and at last had broken his stubborn heart,
+and, with the thunders of calamity, brought him to acknowledge that,
+'Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it.'
+
+Out of that room he walked that day another manner of man.
+
+He was the first to confess that the haunches or side foundations of his
+bridge had not sufficient strength to bear the strain of the lofty and
+expansive arch he had imposed upon them. But he added, '_Please God_, I
+will yet, _with His help_, fulfil my contract, and build a bridge that
+shall stand, even if it leave me penniless.'
+
+Fonder was Elaine of her husband in his humility and misfortune than in
+the pride of his success.
+
+Davy had always stuck by him. 'He set no store by his bit of money
+whatever. William was welcome to every penny, if it was any good.'
+
+Others, richer than Davy, who had held aloof from the 'self-confident
+amateur,' as they called him, were moved by his newly-developed modesty,
+no less than by his indomitable perseverance and resolution (Rhys called
+it obstinacy) in the face of catastrophes that would have overwhelmed
+weaker men. And they honoured his integrity. When his fresh plans were
+ready, funds to 'assist' were ready also.
+
+Over those plans he had pondered and prayed. Like a flash it came to
+his mind that, as the single arch was a strength in masonry, a double
+arch--that is, a circle--must have double strength, and on that he
+formed his plan, to bind the haunches of his bridge with cylinders of
+decreasing sizes, not to narrow his span of arch.
+
+Once more the river-bed was cleared. But on the Sunday, before a stone
+of the new bridge was laid, he summoned his workpeople around him in the
+Druids' circle, and, standing upon the rocking-stone, he preached to
+them from the text, 'Except the Lord build the house, they labour in
+vain that build it,' telling the story of his sudden conversion, of the
+failure of his other bridges as providential instruments to save him
+from overweening arrogance and self-sufficiency; and wound up with an
+exhortation that they should lay every stone as if they laid it before
+the Lord, who alone could decide whether this or that man's work was
+good or bad.
+
+And so, week by week, as the work went on, Sunday by Sunday he preached
+and prayed amongst his men on that Druidical altar, consecrating it
+afresh to the living God, and dedicating himself and his life to the
+service of Christ.
+
+In like manner, when the last coping-stone was in its place, and his
+workmen had gathered up their tools to depart, he knelt down upon the
+bridge, and dedicated that with prayer, saying at the last, 'Keep Thy
+servant from presumptuous sins. And be the glory Thine, O Lord.'
+
+Thus, in 1755, when William Edwards was but thirty-six, he had completed
+his trinity of bridges over the terrible Taff. And there to this day it
+stands, fair to see, with the date of its erection upon it, a bridge
+with a wider span than the Venetian Rialto--a bridge pierced by three
+hollow cylinders on either side, rising gracefully with the magnificent
+arch as they decrease in size.[16]
+
+Upon the opening day, apart from the peasantry, the magnates of three
+counties flocked to see this wonder of a bridge, and the indomitable man
+who had created it, in the face of difficulties that would have daunted
+weaker men.
+
+As one by one Welshmen of note bent from horse or carriage to shake
+hands with Mr. Edwards and congratulated him on the unrivalled structure
+his genius had created, and he was heard to say modestly in reply, 'I
+trust, with the blessing of God, _this_ bridge will stand,' even Rhys
+admitted that, ''Deed, after all, Willem was a great man,' and Thomas
+Williams kept close beside him, as if desirous to share in his
+employer's glory.
+
+For Mr. Morris, the staunch friend of William Edwards, there with due
+ceremony, breaking a bottle of wine upon the parapet, had named the
+bridge 'Pont-y-Pridd'--The Bridge of Beauty.
+
+[Illustration: THE BRIDGE OF BEAUTY, 1755.]
+
+And when the loud acclaim had subsided, the speaker gave as a reason for
+the name, not alone the wondrous beauty of the structure, or the new
+features the self-trained builder had introduced into
+bridge-building, but that out of his failures he had built up an
+undoubted success, and out of seeming calamities built up another, if an
+unseen bridge, to span the turbulent River of Life and bear him securely
+across from this world to a better, the beautiful bridge of humble
+reliance on the Almighty Creator and Ruler of the universe.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[16] The largest is nine feet in diameter.
+
+
+
+
+POSTSCRIPT.
+
+
+From that day William Edwards' fame as a builder of bridges and smelting
+works was assured. But he could see defects in his Bridge of Beauty; the
+ascent to the centre was steep and toilsome, and although he was
+afterwards called upon to erect bridges, not only in Glamorganshire, but
+in Carmarthenshire and Brecknockshire, he built no more on the same
+model.
+
+His handsome three arched bridge over the Teify is pierced with hollow
+cylinders over the piers, adding beauty to strength; but in that as in
+others he reduced the height with more regard to the useful than the
+picturesque.
+
+He was a busy man, working for his family and the community six days a
+week, giving the seventh to divine service amongst his people--services
+so highly appreciated that in 1756 he was ordained to preach. And he
+was never a rich man, he gave so largely of his earnings to the
+suffering poor. And though he must have seen towns springing up around
+the ironworks he built, and highroads made to connect them, giving
+employment to hundreds of workers, he was nevermore heard to boast of
+_his_ doings. He knew and owned that the capital of other men had set
+his brains and hands at work.
+
+And when at a ripe old age he was laid to rest under the shade of
+Eglwysilan Church and its giant yews, he left his well-trained son David
+to inherit his fame and his faculty as a bridge-builder. But he never
+built a Pont-y-Pridd, and it is with the bridge and town of Pontypridd
+William Edwards' name is mainly associated, even by those who never
+recognise in him a pioneer of progress, a benefactor to South Wales.
+
+Indeed, since his day, to meet the increasing traffic, a canal has been
+cut from Cardiff northward, and the very course of the River Taff
+diverted, changing the character of the district I have attempted to
+describe as it was in my hero's day. More recently a railroad to meet
+the ever-growing demands of ironmasters, colliery owners, and others,
+has been constructed, still further changing the face of the country,
+now bristling with iron and tin works. A new bridge has, moreover, been
+thrown across the river, somewhat higher up the stream, a bridge more in
+accord with modern requirements, and which has in a measure superseded
+high-pitched Pont-y-Pridd; but the beautiful old bridge is still
+standing, a picturesque monument to the memory of its persevering and
+pious builder, and a reminder to this self-sufficient generation, so
+proud of its own grand doings, that, but for William Edwards and his
+bridges and furnaces, progress in South Wales might have slumbered a
+generation or more.
+
+
+THE END.
+
+PRINTED BY MORRISON AND GIBB LIMITED, EDINBURGH
+
+
+
+
+_A Selection from Books for Girls._
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+     | KEITH'S TRIAL AND VICTORY. By EVELYN
+ At  |   EVERETT-GREEN. Illustrated by PAUL HARDY. Gilt edges.
+ 3/6 |
+     | A well-written story of a young girl of high position, who,
+     | disappointed in her expectations as an heiress, learns nobly
+     | her lesson of self-conquest.
+-----+------------------------------------------------------------------
+ At  | CONSTANCIA'S HOUSEHOLD. A Story of the
+ 3/6 | Spanish Reformation. By EMMA LESLIE, Author of "Caught
+     | in the Toils." Illustrated.
+-----+------------------------------------------------------------------
+     | UNDER THE WAR-CLOUDS. A Tale of 1870. By
+ At  | E. F. POLLARD. With numerous Illustrations. Gilt edges.
+ 3/6 |
+     | A romance of the Franco-German War, showing how it affected an
+     | English family resident in Paris. Many of the scenes are drawn
+     | from the author's own recollections.
+-----+------------------------------------------------------------------
+     | A DIFFICULT DAUGHTER. By EVELYN EVERETT-GREEN.
+ At  | Illustrated by PAUL HARDY. Gilt edges.
+ 3/6 |
+     | The story of a madcap girl in wealthy circumstances, the pranks
+     | she played, the troubles she created, and the way in which her
+     | finer qualities gradually triumphed over the spirit of mischief.
+-----+------------------------------------------------------------------
+ At  | MARY MORDAUNT. By ANNIE GRAY. Large, handsome
+ 2/  | volume, gilt top. Illustrated.
+     |                                         [THE "ENDEAVOUR" LIBRARY.
+-----+------------------------------------------------------------------
+     | HETTY MARTIN'S TRIAL; or, Thorns and Roses.
+ At  | A Story of Home Life. By Mrs. LYSAGHT. Illustrated by
+ 2/  | W. DEWAR. Gilt top.                     [THE "ENDEAVOUR" LIBRARY.
+     |
+     | Showing how two girls and their mother left in poor circumstances
+     | through the death of the father, who was a farmer, bravely fight
+     | help life's battle, and find a long-lost relative, who comes to
+     | their and relief.
+-----+------------------------------------------------------------------
+     | A GIRL GOVERNESS; or, Ella Dalton's Success.
+ At  | By A. E. WARD. Illustrated by EVERARD HOPKINS.
+ 2/  | Second edition.
+     |
+     | A story of a young girl who, in controlling and influencing her
+     | pupil, a self-willed little lad, is led to look up from her old
+     | self-sufficiency to the true source of strength.
+-----+------------------------------------------------------------------
+     | MARION HARLING'S AWAKENING. A Story of an
+ At  | Eldest Daughter. By EDITH M. EDWARDS. Illustrated by
+ 2/  | SCOTT RANKIN.
+     |
+     | Showing how a country minister's daughter lived fretfully in the
+     | monotony of a dull household, until she learned through bitter
+     | experience the need for self-subjection in the joy of living for
+     | others.
+-----+------------------------------------------------------------------
+ At  | THE PILOT'S DAUGHTERS and FAITH HARROWBY.
+ 2/  | By SARAH DOUDNEY.
+-----+------------------------------------------------------------------
+     | CAUGHT IN THE TOILS. A Story of a Convent School. By EMMA LESLIE.
+ At  |                                 [THE "WONDERFUL SHILLING" SERIES.
+ 1/  |
+     | Relates the methods employed in a French Convent School to
+     | pervert two English Protestant girls who were sent there for
+     | education.
+-----+------------------------------------------------------------------
+ At  | THE KING'S DIADEM. By ANNIE GRAY.
+ 1/  |                                 [THE "WONDERFUL SHILLING" SERIES.
+     |
+     | Is a story for elder girls, and shows how the heroine gave up
+     | worldly pleasures to consecrate herself to the Master's work.
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+London: THE SUNDAY SCHOOL UNION, 57 and 59 Ludgate Hill, E. C.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Making of William Edwards, by
+Mrs. G. Linnaeus Banks
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