Pedr Evans dived into the contents of a box of picture post-cards; from the shop counter all that could be seen of him was the back of broad shoulders, two inches of sturdy neck, well-shaped ears, and a thatch of brown hair. The box, which was large and placed on a shelf behind the counter, gave evidences to the person who could peek over the counter and around Pedr of being in an alarming state of disorder. Apparently the man fumbling among the cards intended to rearrange them; at least some line of the figure suggested that this was the impression he wished to convey. But it was as if he were running his hands through sand, for the post-cards slipped from his fingers and fell in even greater confusion. A woman who had entered the shop-door looked at his back a second—she had caught a rim of the face as it had turned quickly away—smiled, lifted her eyebrows, and stuck her tongue into one heavily tinted cheek.

“’Ts, ’ts,” she hissed, behind her teeth.

Pedr wheeled about; in turning he caught the corner of his box of post-cards, and over they went upon the floor.

“Well, indeed, Catrin Griffiths,” he said, with an attempt at composure.

“Aye, it’s me,” she answered airily. “Ffi! Playin’ cards, Pedr Evans? Um-m, what would Nelw Parry be sayin’?”

Pedr coloured and shifted his weight.

“No, puttin’ the stock in order,” he objected.

“Yes? Well, an’ playin’ you didn’t see me? Yes?”

Catrin patted the puffs of yellow hair that projected from under her pink hat, and, placing a finger on her lips, smiled insinuatingly at Pedr. It was evident as she stood before him that she considered herself alluring, a charming embodiment of the world and the flesh and the devil. Of that world, it was rumoured, Pedr Evans knew something; at least he had made excursions into it; he had been to Liverpool, nay, he had been even farther, for he had been to London. London! The word chimed as merrily in Catrin’s ears as coronation bells. London! Pedr Evans had been to London, and the magic word had been in more mouths than Catrin’s. There was never a question asked in Conway, climbing by degrees to the wise men of the village and still failing an answer, but people would say, “Aye, well, indeed, we dunno, but Pedr Evans he’s been to London, an’ he’ll know, whatever.”

Catrin Griffiths had seen him mount the London coach, and she had seen him return. And, by a method of reasoning wholly her own, she had concluded that he would appreciate her, for she, Catrin Griffiths, had seen something of that world, too; she had seen highly-coloured prints of Piccadilly, the ’busses with gay people atop and fine ladies in their carriages clad in cloaks and furs and furbelows, throats and wrists bejewelled in a marvellous fashion, and such fine gentlemen driving the carriages; and, what is more, she had spelled painfully through the English, in which her tongue was stiff, of a beautiful romance, “Lady Nain’s Escape.” Catrin considered her worldly schooling of coloured pictures, a novel, and advertisements, the best, and with an occasional shilling sent to Liverpool she had literally applied this tuition to her face and figure. She realised, however, that there were still worlds for her to conquer, and a far enchanted land called Drawing Room into which she had not as yet had even a lithographic peep. Because she longed for greater nearness to this kingdom, therefore she longed for Pedr. As she stood before him, her pink hat on her yellow hair, her painted face thick with chalk, her lips a glossy carmine, her throat embedded in fluffs of cheap tulle, her figure stuffed into an ancient dress of white serge, she was wondering how it would be possible for any man to resist her.

But the man whom she ogled blushed; he looked furtively towards the windows, and at the door at the back of the shop, and it was plain to be seen that he felt himself caught in a trap between his counter and the shelf. He seemed ashamed, ashamed to look at her.

“Well, Catrin,” he said, without lifting his eyes, “what can I do for you to-day?”

“Dear anwyl, it’s most slipped my mind—um-m—well, I’ll be havin’ sixpence worth of writin’ paper.”

“Aye, smooth, I suppose?” he asked, taking it from the shelf.

“No, I think I’ll take it rough, for that’s the style now, whatever.”

“Oh! very well.”

“Been takin’ photographs lately, Pedr?”

“Not many.”

“I’m thinkin’ you’ll be goin’ down Caerhun way some day soon,” she continued, her pink face wrinkling with mingled mirth and devilry; “it’s very pretty there, good for an artist like you.”

Pedr folded in the ends of the parcel and said nothing.

“Aye,” she went on, “an’ there’s an old church there, with a bell-tower that looks over the wall like an eye. It don’t wink, Pedr, but I’m thinkin’, indeed, it could tell a good deal, if it had a mind to. It’s next to the church the Parrys used to live.”

Pedr, tying the parcel and snapping the string, maintained his silence.

“It’s there old Parry used to be drunk as a faucet; aye, an’, Pedr,” she whispered, “I could be tellin’ you somethin’ else. Nelw Parry——”

“Tut!” said Pedr angrily; “here’s your parcel, Catrin Griffiths. You’ll have to be excusin’ me this morning, for I’m busy.”

“Pooh, busy!” and Catrin laughed shrilly; “you’re always busy when there’s a mention of Nelw Parry. Well, ask Nelw herself what it is she can tell you that you don’t know. Perhaps you’ll be wantin’ to know before you marry her.”

And with a flounce Catrin Griffiths betook herself out of the shop.

Pedr with his back to the counter was the same as Pedr with his face to the shop-door; however, he did not seem the same. The back suggested middle age, but the face was the face of a boy in its expression, with something perennially young about it: it may have been innocence or untouched pride or something that looked from his eyes as if they had been those of a mere girl. Indeed, except for a conscious awkwardness of hand and a certain steadfast, almost impassive look about the mouth, he might have recited an awdl or been a bard. Howbeit, he could neither play a harp nor recite an ode. And because he kept only a stationer’s shop, which contained a fine medley of inferior post-cards scattered everywhere, piles of newspapers, books, shelves of letter-paper, trinkets of rustic and plebeian sort, it would not be safe to conclude that he was no more than a thoroughly commonplace man. Because he spent his leisure from the shop in taking pictures of the country he loved, it would not be wise to decide that he was therefore a poor, mediocre thing who had not brains enough to make even a very wretched artist; who was, in short, a mere factotum to higher ability.

Pedr’s shop, which lay on a steep winding cobblestone street next to the Cambrian Pill DepÔt, five doors down from Plas Mawr and twenty doors up from the Castle Gate, was tenanted by dreams as fair and holy in service, although they never found their way into the world except by means of sensitised paper or by an occasional expression in Pedr’s eye or tremble of his impassive lips—this shop was tenanted by dreams as fair as any which had ever waited upon accepted painter or poet. They had a habit of tiptoeing about unseen, so that the usual customer who entered Pedr’s door would not have felt their presence. Nelw Parry had come to know them well, but before Catrin Griffiths they vanished away. The lovely colour of dawn itself was not gobbled up faster by the smoke of trade than these entities disappeared at the sound of Catrin Griffiths’ heels upon the street. In fact the tiny beings were troubled by the presence of even post-cards, for, dream-like, they wished to give all they had, if need be, to the hearts which could be seen beating through the hands that held them, and these cards lying upon the floor, these flaunting things of many colours, were commerce; things, they thought, which were to steal something from men. Over the counter, from which a few minutes ago he had recoiled, Pedr Evans had often leaned, many invisible eyes smiling upon him, taking from some old folio pictures which had caught the very lustre of the sky; or the mingled shadow and iridescence of a hillside, mysteriously suggestive of the sea; or some flow and subsidence of light itself. Like any other mortal, poor Pedr had to live, and that is why he was obliged to keep a shop next to the Cambrian Pill DepÔt. If he had been an artist, the world might willingly have forgotten that he had to live at all and paid him just nothing for his work. But it was not the necessity of existence which made him lean upon the counter, showing a picture another man never would have had the wit to take. To Pedr something beautiful was always worth a plate, so he had many pictures no one bought, and he was not often given a chance to show.

Later in the day, after his encounter with Catrin Griffiths, Pedr was with Nelw Parry in the sitting-room of the Raven Temperance, drinking tea. Nelw’s house, from the outside, was a quaint, stuccoed building with a quantity of chimney-pots sticking up into the sky, neat steps and a brass sill at the front door, a painted sign “Raven Temperance,” and printed cards at the windows, one bearing a cyclist’s wheel decorated with mercurial wings, the other the gratifying word, “Refreshments.” Within the room were two people, both middle-aged, drinking tea—a commonplace enough scene the casual observer would have said; however, at that moment these two people, even if they were doing nothing more romantic than talking quietly together, lifting their teacups once in a while and looking at each other a good deal, were very much like good children in a fairy tale. It may have been merely a trick of the light due to the low casement windows, that the room seemed more peaceful than most rooms in Conway; the subdued light touched the soft green walls gently, reaching for the top of the walls as if it were some enchanted region, to enter which it must climb. Indeed, it was an enchanted region, for there a shining silver river ran in and out, in and out, among alleys of green trees. In and out, in and out, it ran noiselessly, and yet it seemed to Pedr, as to some strangers who entered the little room for refreshments, to sing a song heard before—just when, just how, was another question. Some visitors who had been in that room once came again to sit, often bodily weary, while their eyes travelled to that border of the shining river, and the mistress of the “Raven” waited upon them tranquilly, placing the tea-service before them, and, it may be, adjusting a wrap about a stranger’s shoulders as delicately as if she were adding to the comfort of some happy fancy, some ideal, some dream, that a burdened touch might shatter. Grateful, there were tired travellers glad to come and go phantom-like, putting down their silver gently, in a room where reality seemed the greatest phantom of all.

To Pedr it was better than the best picture he had ever taken—better than the best because the thought of taking it would have seemed like desecration. He looked at Nelw, as he did every few seconds, alternately, over his teacup and then without that barrier to his gaze. Coils of dark hair made the shapely head heavy on the slender neck, as if the weight of that abundant beauty were great. It was wonderful hair, making in its shadowy depth a shade for the white, sensitive face, quiet as the reverie of her eyes. In a land where comely hair blessed poor and rich alike with its wealth, Nelw Parry’s was even lovelier than that of her neighbours. It had one peculiarity, however, which her neighbours did not admire but which to Pedr—perhaps to something untutored in Pedr—was dear. Around the edges of its abundance little curls escaped.

“Nelw,” he said, glancing at her wistfully, “they’re prettier than ever.”

She brushed the curls back and looked at him with reproach, as if something she was thinking about, or something of which they had been talking, had been rudely disturbed. As an actual matter of fact they had been saying nothing for two or three minutes, indulging the speechlessness of those who know their way even by day to another land. But Pedr was aware what sort of answer any remark about Nelw’s hair always fetched, so he changed the subject.

“Dearie, Catrin Griffiths was in the shop this mornin’.”

“What was she wantin’?”

“I dunno; she bought sixpence worth of writin’ paper,” replied Pedr, regarding Nelw with the air of a man who would like to say more. He was wondering how much she guessed of Catrin’s angling.

A shadow of annoyance passed over Nelw’s face.

“Dearie,” he continued, encouraged by her expression, “I can’t like her, whatever; she’s—she’s not nice.”

“Well, indeed, she’s smart,” answered Nelw gently.

“Tut! smart in those things she wears? She looks more than frowsy to me; an’—an’ she’s always coming into my shop.”

“Poor thing!” murmured Nelw, her face tender with pity.

Pedr observed her wonderingly. What prompted this compassion in Nelw? What made her understand weakness without being disgusted or repelled by its ugliness? Other women were not like her in this respect. And just behind this yielding lovableness that yearned over the mistakes of others, that reached out to Pedr as one athirst for the necessity of life, that clung to Pedr for strength, for protection, like a child afraid of the dark, what was this sense he had, of an obstinate reticence which seemed the very resiliency of her mysterious nature? Certainly she had had a bitter life. Then, like a viper into its nest, what Catrin Griffiths had said darted into Pedr’s mind. Was there something he did not know, that he ought to know? With the acuteness of the man who can detect the shadow of even a folded leaf, he searched Nelw’s face. Why when she needed him, when she was alone, when she was fretted by the difficulties of her solitary life, why did she always put off their marriage? Baffled, irritated, he spoke sharply.

“Poor thing, nothin’! It’s a pound head an’ a ha’penny tail with Catrin Griffiths.”

Nelw gasped.

“A pound head an’ a ha’penny tail, I say,” he continued roughly, “Aye, an’ the time is comin’, comin’ soon, when she’ll get herself into trouble, flauntin’ around with those frocks on, all decked out, an’ all her false seemin’, her face painted and powdered, an’ her hair dyed. The deceitful thing!”

“Och, Pedr, don’t!”

But Pedr, excited beyond self-control by the workings of his imagination, could not stop. The blanching face before him was no more than a cipher, it expressed nothing to him.

“Tut! that I will. An’ what is it Catrin Griffiths knows an’ I don’t? Yes?”

There was a cry of “Pedr!” Nelw shivered, her eyes widened and stared at him. It was so still in that room that the flutter of the draught sucking the smoke up the chimney could be heard. Pedr sat motionless in his chair, the reality of what he had done yet to reach him. Nelw moved, and in an instant he was beside her.

“Dearie, dearie, what have I done?”

“Och, nothin’—nothin’ at all,” she answered, her face twitching helplessly.

“But I did; och, I was beside myself; I didn’t know what I was sayin’!” Pedr paused, he looked at her longingly: “Nelw, little lamb, is it somethin’ I ought to know?”

“It’s nothin’, nothin’ at all,” she replied, her eyes still staring at him, her hands lying open upon her lap, palms up. And there she sat and sighed and sighed, refusing to answer any of Pedr’s questions; and, every once in a while, moaning, “Not him, dear God, och! not him!”

At dusk every day, and every day in the year except Sunday, and year after year, the servant had brought the lights into Pedr Evans’s stationery shop, and, setting them down, had gone back into the kitchen. This evening, as she went into the room, scarcely knowing whether her master was in or not, everything had been so noiseless, she started, for there he sat, his head in his hands. Except for a slight disturbance when Pedr entered his shop, which it is probable no other human ear would have heard, there had not been a sound, until Betsan came in. Nelw’s “Nothin’, nothin’ at all” had been going around and around in his mind like a turn-buckle tightening up his thoughts, till it seemed to him they would snap. Then it would be, “What has she done? what has she done?” He had known her, in her sensitiveness, to exaggerate; she had confided to him some of the incidents of her childhood, which would have been taken quietly enough by other children. But he was unable to reason away the horror that looked out from her face to-day. And he, Pedr Evans, had asked the question that had brought that expression! A question suggested by a woman of whom even to think in the same moment was to dishonour Nelw. He wondered what it was that crawled into a man’s mind and made him to do a thing like that?

Betsan had barely closed the door into the kitchen, when, like the vision of the woman who tempted St. Anthony, Catrin Griffiths stood before him, the shrewd ogling eyes looking at him out of the painted face. The question, the answer to which was of more concern to him than anything else on earth, surged back upon him and stifled him and beat in his temples and his ears till it seemed as if he could not breathe.

Catrin coughed.

“Um-m, Pedr Evans, I forgot the envelopes this mornin’.”

“Well, indeed,” he replied mechanically.

“Aye,” she affirmed. Then asked, “Did ye see Nelw Parry this afternoon?” knowing that he had done so, for her room was opposite the Raven.

“Yes,” he said.

“What was she tellin’ you, eh, what? She’s not so unlike me, yes?”

Pedr looked at her, his mind at a bow-and-string tension of expectancy.

“She didn’t tell you, I see,” Catrin continued. “Well, may every one pity the poor creature! You’ll be wantin’ to know so——”

But Catrin Griffiths never got any further, for with a leap Pedr was upon her.

“Out of my shop, girl, out!” and she was bundled through the door and the door slammed behind her and locked.

Pedr’s feeling of passionate anger against himself as well as against Catrin gradually settled. He must try to think. He would see no one else to-night and turned out the lamps. For a minute the wicks flickered, puffing odd jets of shadow on the raftered ceiling. There was an instant of wavering flame, then darkness, and only the silvered window-panes looking into the obscure room like big shining eyes. Pedr sat still, thinking, sighing and sighing. There were vague rustling noises in the shop; every time he sighed it seemed as if the noises quivered together like dry leaves. What would it ever matter to him now what happened? Without warning he had been robbed of his happiness; even time never could have proved such a thief, for time was no common plunderer,—if it took away, often it put something far more precious in its place. Pedr had always liked to think what time meant to anything lastingly beautiful; he loved the houses better when they were old, the thought that they had been attractive to others, had held many joys and even sorrows, made them beautiful to him; he liked the lines in an old face, somehow they made it merrier, made it sweeter; even the yellowing of a photograph, for Pedr was limited in his subjects from which to draw illustrations, pleased him with some added softening of tone. Life with Nelw, as it wound towards the end of the road, would be, he had thought, ever more and more enchanting, for just where the road dipped over into space there was the sky. Even Death confirmed love. That last blessing it had to give—the greatest blessing of all. But now his mind must be forever like the track of the snail in the dust. It was no matter to him now what lay upon the hillsides or within the valleys; the heavy-domed shadows of foliage trees, the shadow of ripple upon ripple where the water wrinkles, were alike of little account. He sighed again, and there was the same succession of small sounds, for he was not alone in the room. Hidden away in all the corners and nooks of the darkened shop were scores of little beings, once his comrades. Now they hid and trembled in their dark places, shrinking from Pedr from whom it had been their wont to take what the all-powerful hand offered. They well knew what tragedy might be coming to them, for of their race more had died in one age than of the race of man in all ages. But like the children of men, till the moment of danger they had counted themselves secure, and now when Pedr sighed it was as if the sea went over them. They had always been so well off; but they had seen the fate of their kin, the wide reachless waters that had unexpectedly surrounded them, the boiling of the waves, the calm, and the bodies floating on the surface, their wee diaphanous hands empty of the hearts that had once beat through them, their faces looking with closed eyes up into the everlasting day. As Pedr sighed again and again, they shook now, their hands over their ears, in the dusty holes of the shop. At last Pedr sighed a mighty sigh, and it was like the shaking of the wind in a great tree. Although it was a mighty sigh, the little beings uncovered their ears, and, with a new expression on their faces, leaned forward to hear it repeated. It came once more. Then they crept softly out of their nooks and small recesses and dusty corners, and stood tiptoe waiting for the next sigh. It came, and the wind seemed to shake down lightly through the great tree with the most dulcet notes in all the world; whisperings and tremolos and flutings and pipings. At that, the little beings ran from every part of the shop, and Pedr heard them coming; they clambered about his knees, they climbed into his lap, and Pedr gathered them all into his arms—that is as many as he could hold, and the rest seemed happy enough without being there.

If the truth must be told, Pedr slept soundly that night, just like the most fortunate of lovers. And the next morning, after he had found fault with his breakfast and scolded Betsan for her late rising, he betook himself, with a far more cheerful heart than he had known in many hours, to Nelw’s. Pedr in the darkened shop had learned a lesson which he would not have exchanged for any pure unmixed joy upon earth. And he knew even now, with the sun upon him and a strange yearning within him, that it mattered very little what Nelw had done or was hiding from him, for despite every dreadful possibility he loved her with a feeling that mastered fear.

When Nelw opened the door for him she shrank away.

“Och, Pedr,” she said, “so early!”

“Well, indeed, so early,” he replied, with an attempt at gaiety.

“So now I must be tellin’ you,” she whispered, hanging her head, and looking, with her white face, ready to sink to the floor.

“Indeed, dearie, you’ll not be tellin’ me, whatever,” he declared hotly.

“Pedr!” she exclaimed, “but you said Catrin Griffiths—alas, I must tell you!” She lifted her hand as if she were going to point to something and then dropped it.

“I’m not carin’ what I said about Catrin Griffiths or about any one else. Dear little heart, you’re makin’ yourself sick over this an’——”

“Och, but I must tell you!” and again came the futile motion of the hand.

“You shall not!” he commanded.

“Yes, now, now,” she cried, lifting her hand; “Pedr I—I have——”

Pedr seized the uplifted hand.

“No, Nelw, no;” and he put his finger over her mouth and drew her to him.

“Pedr, I must,” she pleaded, struggling to free herself.

“No, not now; I’m not carin’ to know now. Wait until we’re married.”

“Oh no, oh no!” Nelw moaned. “That wouldn’t be fair to you. Och, if you knew——”

But Pedr covered her mouth with his hand and drew her closer.

“Not now, little lamb.”

She sat quite still, her head upon his shoulder. Pedr felt her relaxing and heard her sighing frequently. She seemed so little and so light where she rested upon him, almost a child, and a new sense of contentment stole over Pedr. He patted her face; she made no reply, but he felt her draw nearer to him. At last she lifted her hand and passed it gently over his head.

“Och, Pedr,” she whispered, “I’m growin’ old.”

“Old, nothin’,” replied Pedr.

“Aye, but I’m over thirty.”

“Pooh!” returned Pedr, “that’s nothin’!”

“Yes, it is; an’ as I grew older you would mind even more if——”

“Nelw,” said Pedr warningly, covering her mouth again.

“But, Pedr, how could you love me when I’d grown very old? I wouldn’t have any hair at all,” she faltered, “an’ not any teeth,” she continued, gasping painfully, “an’—an’ wrinkles an’ oh—an’ oh—dear!” she half sobbed.

“Tut,” said Pedr calmly, “what of it? It’s always that way, an’ I’m thinkin’ love could get over a little difficulty like that, whatever. Indeed, I’m thinkin’ what with love an’ time we’d scarcely notice it. I dunno,” he added reflectively, “if we did notice it I’m thinkin’ we’d love each other better.”

At these words Nelw smiled a little as if she were forgetting her trouble. After a while she spoke—

“You are comin’ this afternoon again, Pedr, are you?”

“Yes, dearie,” he answered, “I’m comin’.”

“Och, an’ it must—it must be told,” she ended, forlornly.

It was quiet up and down the winding cobblestone street; no two-wheeled carts jaunted by; there was no clatter of wooden clogs, no merriment of children playing, no noise of dogs barking. And all this quietude was due to the simple fact that people were preparing to take their tea, that within doors kettles were boiling, piles of thin bread and butter being sliced, jam—if the family was a fortunate one—being turned out into dishes, pound-cake cut in delectably thick slices, and, if the occasion happened to need special honouring, light cakes being browned in the frying-pan. Previous to the actual consumption of tea, the men, their legs spread wide apart, were sitting before the fire, enjoying the possession of a good wife or mother who could lay a snowy cloth. And the children, having passed one straddling age and not having come to the next, were busy sticking hungry little noses into every article set upon the cloth, afraid, however, to do more than smell a foretaste of paradise.

So the street, except for a gusty wind that romped around corners, was deserted. When Nelw Parry opened a casement on the second floor, she saw not a soul. She looked up and down, up and down,—no, there was not a body stirring. Then her head disappeared, and shortly one hand reappeared and hung something to the sill. True, there was not a soul upon the street, but opposite the Raven Temperance, behind carefully-closed lattice windows, sat a woman who saw everything. Catrin Griffiths had been waiting there some time to discover whether Pedr Evans would come to-day as he did other days at half-past four. But when she beheld Nelw’s hand reappear to hang something at the window, she jumped up, with a curious expression on her face, exclaiming, “A wonder!” and ran swiftly downstairs and out into the street. Once in the street she gazed steadily at the object swinging from the casement of the Raven, and again, “A wonder!” she ejaculated. She began to laugh in a harsh low fashion, then shrilly and more shrilly. “Oh, the lamb!” she exclaimed, “oh, the innocent!” Her hilarity increased, and she slapped herself on the hip, and finally held on to her bodice as if she would burst asunder. At the doors, heads appeared; some disappeared immediately upon descrying Catrin, but others thrust them out further.

“See” she called, seeing Modlan Jones coming towards her, “there’s Nelw Parry’s cocyn.”

Modlan canted her head upwards towards the object and chuckled—

“Ow, the idiot!”

“Och, the innocent!” laughed Catrin. “’Ts, ’ts,” she called to Malw Owens, who, munching bread, was approaching from a little alley-way; “Nelw Parry’s cocyn’s unfurled at last an’ flappin’ in the breeze.”

One by one a throng gathered under the walls of the Raven Temperance, and the explosions of mirth and the exclamations multiplied, until the whole street rang with the boisterous noise, and one word, “Cocyn! cocyn!“ rebounded from lip to lip and wall to wall. But there were some who, coming all the way out of their quiet houses and seeing the occasion of this mad glee, shook their heads sadly and said, “Poor thing! she’s not wise!” and went in again. And there were others who passed by on the other side of the road, and they, too, muttered, “Druan bach!” pityingly, and if they were old enough to have growing sons, cast glances none too kind at Catrin Griffiths. Evidently the “poor little thing” was not intended for her; but, indeed, they might have spared one for her, for it is possible that she needed it more than the woman who lay indoors in a convulsion of tears. Suddenly, amidst the nudges and thrusts and sniggers and shrieks, Catrin clapped her hands together.

“Listen,” she bade, “now listen! I’ll be fetchin’ Pedr.” And with a snort of amusement from them all, she was off down the street.

What happened to Catrin before she reached Pedr’s door will never be told. By the time she came to the Cambrian Pill DepÔt she was screwing her courage desperately. Even the most callous have strange visitations of fear, odd forebodings of failure, and hang as devoutly upon Providence as the most pious. It would be robbing no one to give Catrin a kind word or, indeed, a tear or two. Good words and tears are spent gladly upon a blind man, then why not upon Catrin, whose blindness was an ever-night far deeper? She was but groping for something she thought she needed, for something to make her happier, as every man does. And now, as it often is with the one who hugs his virtue as well as with the sinful, the road slipped suddenly beneath her feet and her thoughts were plunged forward into a dark place of fears. She, who always had had breath and to spare for the expression of any vulgar or trivial idea which came to her, could barely say, as she thrust her head in at the door of Pedr’s shop, “Nelw Parry’ll be needin’ you now.” What she had intended to say was something quite different; since she did not say it, it need not be repeated here.

It seemed an eternity to Pedr before, without any show of following Catrin too closely, he could leave the shop. The sounds of the jangling voices he was nearing mingled with the gusty wind that whickered around housetops and corners, and brushed roughly by him with a dismal sound. He walked with slow deliberateness, but his thoughts ran courier-like ever forward and before him. To his sight things had a peculiar distinctness, adding in some way to his foreknowledge, prescient with the distress he heard in the wind. He looked up to the casement towards which all eyes were directed. Something attached to the sill whipped out in the wind and then flirted aimlessly to and fro. Pedr scanned it intently. Another gust of wind caught it, and again it spread out and waved about glossily plume-like. Then for a moment, unstirred by the air, it hung limp against the house-side; it was glossy and black and—and—thought Pedr with a rush of comprehension—like a long strand of Nelw’s hair.

There were suppressed titters and sly winks as he came to the group before the Raven.

“Ffi, the poor fellow, I wonder what he’ll do now?” asked one.

“Hush!” said another.

“Well, indeed,” answered a third, tapping her head significantly, “what would one expect when she’s not wise?”

“He’s goin’ in,” said a fourth.

While all eyes were upon Pedr, Catrin Griffiths had slipped away from their midst, slid along the wall, and stolen across the street. The look upon Pedr’s face was like a hot iron among her wretched thoughts, and hiss! hiss! hiss! it was cutting down through all those strings that had held her baggage of body and soul together.

Pedr made his way into the house and to the couch where Nelw lay.

“Nelw,” he said.

Nelw caught her breath between sobs.

“Nelw,” he repeated gently, sitting down by her, “there, little lamb!”

Nelw stopped crying.

“Pedr, did you see?” she asked.

“Did I see? Yes, I saw your cocyn hangin’ to the window.”

Nelw sat up straight.

“Do—do you understand, Pedr? Did you hear them mockin’ me?”

“Aye, an’ I know it’s your cocyn.” Pedr smiled, “Little lamb, did you think that would make any difference?”

“But, Pedr,” she said insistently, as if she must make him understand, “these curls are all I really—really have.” She drew one out straight.

“Aye, dearie, I’m thinkin’ that is enough.”

If he had been telling her a fairy story Nelw’s eyes could not have grown wider.

Pedr cocked his head critically to one side.

“It’s very pretty, whatever,” he added; “I was always likin’ that part of your hair the best.”

And now there is no more story to tell; for Pedr set to work to get the tea for Nelw. As he went in and out of a door, sometimes they smiled at each other foolishly and sometimes Pedr came near enough to pat her on the head. The room, although it would have been difficult to lay hands on its visitors, had other inmates too, for it was full of Pedr’s comrades. Every minute they increased in number, as is the way of the world when two people, even if they are not very wise,—and of course they never will be wise if they are not by the time they are middle-aged,—are joined together in love. And every one of these little visitors took the heart it held in its wee transparent hands and offered it to Nelw. And Nelw, as Pedr had done almost twenty-four hours ago, gathered the dreams into her arms, and there they lay upon her breast like the children they really were. And above this scene the shining silver river ran in and out, in and out among its alleys of green trees singing a gentle song which, once it has been learned, can never be forgotten.