Through Welsh Doorways Part 12

"I laugh, Janny! Why, dear," answered Ariel slowly, "I think--the--window--is beautiful!"

"Oh, Ariel!" said Janny happily.

"Aye, I do; only if ye should have another idea, just tell me about it, dearie, beforehand, for it might--perhaps it wouldn't," he added gently, "make it awkward."

"But, Ariel, I saw----"

"Well, dear, that's enough--ye don't understand these people quite yet.

The window is beautiful; aye," he continued, "I like it, so we'll be sendin' it to Liverpool to get a real stained-gla.s.s window something the same--aye, dearie, I can well afford it."

_The Child_

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.

"Hus.h.!.+ Some one comes."

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

"G.o.d'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 fas.h.i.+on 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."