The irons of the fireplace glowed in the light of the steady peat-fire. The odour from the peat was delicious with the aroma of age-old forests. With this was mingled the odour of the supper Jane Morris was clearing away. As she moved nimbly about the table, Jane’s shadow advanced and withdrew across the blackened rafters of the roof.

“Whoo-o!” said Tom, comfortably, at the sound of the wind booming down the rocky mountain-side. “’Tis a bad night for strangers to be abroad, bad to be wandering along Bryn Bannog.”

“Aye, ’tis dark,” answered Owen, removing his pipe, and rubbing the head of a pet lamb that lay beside him. “One minute it cries like a child, and another it wails like a demon. But ’tis snug within, lad, an’ we’ll never know want.”

The bachelor brothers regarded each other and their sister with contentment. Outside the wind shouted and cried by turns, and then died away clamorously in the deep valley.

“Snug within, lad,” reaffirmed Owen, drawing his harp to him.

Tom lifted his finger.

“Hush! Some one comes.”

All listened while the wind beat upon the house and sobbed piteously in the chimney. Jane hastened to the door.

“God’s blessin’—rest—on this house!” gasped a man, stumbling in.

“Take the stranger’s cloak off,” commanded Owen, before the visitor was in, “an’ here’s my clogs dry an’ warm.”

“Tut, tut,” objected Jane, “’tis food he needs, whatever. I’ll fetch him bread an’ fill the big pint. Now, friend, this chair by the table.”

The Stranger sat down; his deep-set eyes looked out wistfully on the awakened bustle, and on the warmth and the cheer of the cottage room. But they heard him whisper drearily, “My little child, my little child!”

Tom tried to lift the silence that was settling over them all with a question here and a question there. The Stranger ate absent-mindedly and ravenously, drinking his ale in greedy draughts. Owen knocked the ashes from his pipe and stared into the fire.

“’Tis late,” he said.

The Stranger lifted his eyes, looked at the two brothers, and long at Jane.

“I shall not rest——” he began.

“Well, Stranger, that you will not with a burden on your mind. That’s so, lad?” Tom asked, turning to Owen.

“I shall not rest till I have told my dream,” he resumed. “All day and every day my little one lies on her back—the crooked back that is killin’ her.”

“Dear anwyl!” exclaimed Owen to Jane and Tom, “’tis very like his little one.”

“Aye, lad,” answered Jane, while the wind drew gently over the house-roof.

“The dream came many times an’ I did not heed it.”

“He who follows dreams follows fools,” interrupted Tom.

“I am a poor man, with naught richer than dreams to follow, an’ no mother for my child. If the dream prove true, gold would make my little one well. But the days are goin’ fast an’ she is weaker every day.”

“Och!” sighed Jane.

“Tut, a dream come true!” scoffed Tom, laughing. “But what was your dream?” he asked, leaning forward.

“It was of a pitcherful of gold hid beneath a ruin of rocks piled one upon another, an’ it was near a great fortress built in a fashion unknown to me. The fortress was on the crown of a rugged hill, an’ it seemed away from the sea. So I have travelled eastward.”

“Pen y Gaer!” exclaimed Owen and Tom and Jane, looking at one another.

“An’ in this dream I saw many strange things, garments unlike aught men wear now.”

“Aye,” agreed Jane, “but it was all a dream.”

“Nay, nay,” replied the Stranger, “can you not tell me of it?”

“That we can,” said Owen.

“Tut,” interrupted Tom, “there is a round tower, aye, two round towers, the one by Pen y Gaer, south-west over Bryn Bannog, down the bridle-path by Llyn Cwm-y-stradlyn.”

“Aye, but, lad,” objected Owen, “the other——”

“The other’s further away, more like a sheep-pen once than a tower for any fortress.”

Owen’s face was perplexed, but Tom’s calm, and his eyes keen with light.

“Rest here, Stranger,” he said. “On the morrow you shall start out for your treasure, up over Bryn Bannog.”

“Nay, Tom,” interrupted Owen, but Tom silenced him.

The next morning Tom stood outside the hedge that enclosed their grey-stone mountain cottage, pointing with his finger.

“Well, more to the west, so.”

“Aye,” replied the Stranger, scanning Bryn Bannog, its steep meadows, its rocks tufted with golden gorse, its craggy spine from which the mist was lifting; “yes, the path is plain.”

The Stranger set his eyes southward up the mountain. After a while he turned to look back at the cottage cradled in the fields below; beyond the valley, Moelwyn, massive and green; eastward, Cynicht, sharp and grey; and still farther east, a vast wilderness of crag tumbled hither and thither down to the very edge of the glimmering sea. “Hope goes with me, little one,” he said, and turned to climb higher. At the summit he looked westward; there lay a lake blue as a meadow-flower, and half-way down, by the little brook Tom had described, there was a large circle of loose stones.

The Stranger hurried forward. He glanced at the sun, and began by the edge of the circle near the brook, turning up the soggy earth in large clods. He dug feverishly, working hour after hour. He lay down and pulled the earth away in rolls, the wet drenching him, still hoping against hope. He took the clods of earth and dashed them against the rocks where they broke noiselessly. He looked about as if praying that some power might come to him from the blue distance or the sky above or the golden sun; then he sank on the stones and wept. The little green snake that crept by in the grass, the snail that trailed over the sod, heard him weep, and the cry that came from him, “My little one, my little one, was it for this?”

The afternoon swung its shadows eastward, and the roof of the cottage lay in a pointed figure on the grass beyond the hedge. Two men bearing something toiled up the path to the hedge gate. As the sun set behind Bryn Bannog the pointed roof-shadow drew in, and the shadow from the hedge lay on the grass in a dark ribbon, growing narrower and fainter. From the distant summit a single figure dropped slowly downhill, the autumn dusk closing around it. In the windows candle-light flickered; a woman came to the west door and looked uphill. She seemed troubled and she had been crying.

“Brothers, he is comin’,” called Jane, “he is close by the house. Och, be kind to him for the child’s sake! It is not too late even now.”

“Well, Stranger,” said Tom, appearing at the door, “did you find aught?”

“Nay,” replied the Stranger, in a level voice. “Is there another ruin where the dream might lie?”

“Dreams!” exclaimed Tom cheerily, “dreams, dreams! ’Tis no place for dreams. You will find nothin’ but sheep bones buried on Bryn Bannog. Do you know of any other place, Owen?”

Owen took his pipe from his mouth, looked hard at his brother, hard at the Stranger, started to speak, changed his mind, and put the pipe in his mouth again.

“Will you come in an’ rest?” asked Tom. “’Tis growin’ dark.”

“My way is long, westward over the hills, an’ the child is waitin’.”

“Here,” said Tom, holding out a coin, “here is a crown for the little Flower.”

“Nay,” replied the Stranger gently, “it would avail nothin’. She hath need of many crowns. Good-night.”

As the Stranger took the path downhill, the brothers turned indoors. Jane confronted them, her eyes indignant, her lips tense.

“You—you will go after him. Och, that I should live to see this day! The Lord will find you out.”

Tom laughed.

“Set the candle on the table,” he said; “’tis an odd box. Is the door fast, Owen?”

“Aye, fast.”

“To think it’s lain in our pastures these hundreds of years.”

Tom undid the hasps. He lifted out one chalice of silver after another, and several silver plates, all marked with early dates. Tom looked disappointed; Owen’s face had grown pallid. Jane was speaking to them both:—

“’Tis the lost church silver, the altar-service, aye, the holy altar-service; now what will you do?” she cried.

At the breakfast table the porridge was eaten in silence. Jane’s eyes were red. Tom looked uneasy, and Owen stared into his dish. In vain Gwennie thrust her little white nose against Owen’s leg. “Baa-a!” Still no attention.

“I’m glad the wind is quiet,” said Jane.

There was no response.

“Did you sleep, Tom?” she asked.

“Sleep! With that shriekin’ of the wind!”

“Nay,” said Owen softly, “the cryin’ of a little child, indeed.”

“There was no gold, I say,” Tom asserted.

“True,” Owen complied.

“Well, ’twas altar silver, whatever.”

“Aye,” assented Jane, “an’ it must go back to the church.”

“Yes, an’ we’re no richer,” ended Tom. “We’ve nothin’ to spare to a stranger an’ his child.”

Owen turned the leaves of the big Bible on the table. Tom was staring defiantly from Jane to Owen.

“’It were better a millstone’—” Owen began to read to himself.

“The devil!” shouted Tom, rushing from the table and slamming the door behind him.

Owen went out after him. Their work for that day lay in the sheep-pens by the brook, washing and shearing the sheep. Before him Tom was walking very fast and talking in a loud, angry voice. But Owen was thinking of the sound of the wind as it cried and whimpered and pleaded all night long. And the flowers he saw in the grass at his feet made him think of big eyes; and the sheen on the grass, of a child’s hair; and the slender birch-wands, of a child’s little body. What would it have been like to have had such a little one a part of him? And supposing it had lain crumpled together like yonder fern—Owen’s heart gave a great leap.

Tom was still talking when he reached the sheepfold. The anger had left his face, and in its stead there was uneasy inquiry. Owen, without looking at his brother, took his seat on the shearing-stool and the shepherd carried a sheep to him. Owen turned it deftly. Clip, clip, clip, the fleece began to roll back from the shears and the skin to show pink through the stubble of remaining fleece. Clip! a deft turn to right, then to left, and the fleece slipped to the ground and lay there, white, and with arms outstretched.

“Och!” exclaimed Owen, staring at it, “I’m goin’ westward to the child, tell Jane.”

“I’m goin’, too,” called Tom, walking after him rapidly, grumbling and talking, “an’ I’ll not tell Jane. There’s no need to go so fast, whatever.”

Jane came to the door of the cottage and looked down to the roadway. Gwennie was beside her and caught sight of Owen. “Baa-a!” the lamb bleated, scampering downhill.

“Gwennie, Gwennie!” called Jane.

But the stiff little legs were taking the hillside in leaps and bounds.

“Gwennie, bach, Gwennie, Gwennie bach!”

Jane started downhill after the lamb. “If they’re goin’,” she said to herself, with a shrewd look of understanding, “indeed, I’m goin’ too.”

“Baa-a!” bleated Gwennie, with little frisks and skips to right and left.