assed through
the country towns and villages, and the people came out and pressed
pennies into his hand, or invited him into their houses for a rest, a
hunch of bread and cheese, or a bowl of cawl; and he sang as he tramped
over the lonely hillsides, sometimes weary and faint enough, but still
singing; and when at night he retired to rest in some hay-loft or barn,
or perhaps alone under the starry night sky, he was wont to sing
himself to sleep, as he had done when a child in the old homestead of
which nobody knew.

When he began the words of the song so sweet to every Welshman's ear:

"Oh! lovely bird with azure wing
Wilt bear my message to her?"

every ear was intent upon the melody, and as the rich sonorous voice
carried it on through its first fervid strains of love, to the
imploring cadences of the ending, heads and hands beat time, eyes
glistened, humid with feeling, and when the song had come to an end,
there was a breathless silence and a sigh of satisfaction.

"There's lovely it is! Sing us again, Neddy bach."

And Neddy sang again the song of the red-cheeked little prince, who
slept in his golden cradle, a red-cheeked apple in his hand. It was
but a simple nursery rhyme, but Neddy put his soul into it, for he was
but a child himself in spite of his tall stature and grizzled locks.

Morva was sitting on the steps which led up to the rickety, windy loft,
Gethin beside her on an upturned barrow.

"I might go on with my knitting," said the girl, "if somebody would
hold my skein for me to wind."

Gethin held it, of course; and while the ball increased in size there
was plenty of time and opportunity for talk, which was interrupted by
Robin's fiddle striking up a merry jig time. Wool and ball were laid
aside, while Ann placed six lighted candles on the floor--four in the
centre and one at each end, with space enough between them for the
figures of the dance.

Neddy listened a few moments, seemingly to get the rhythm well into his
mind; then starting up, and flinging his heavy shoes aside, he took his
place at the end of the space cleared for him, his ragged corduroy
trousers hanging in tatters round his bare ankles. With his thumbs in
the armholes of his waistcoat, he began the dance, singing all the time
an old refrain descriptive of its measure; keeping at a little distance
from the group of candles, but gradually approaching nearer and nearer,
and at length flinging his bare feet around the fla