breath.

Gwilym did not answer, but undoing the pink tape which tied it, he
poured out on the table forty glittering sovereigns.

"There!" he said, "what do you think; old Tim 'Penlau' paid me the 40
pounds he has owed me so long!"

"Well, wonders will never cease!" said Ebben Owens.

"How long has he had them?" asked Will.

"Oh! these years and years. I had quite given them up, but he was
always promising that when he sold his farm he would repay me. Now
they have come just in time to furnish the new house, Ann."

"But why didn't you put them into the bank?" asked Will.

"'Twas too late, the bank was closed; but I will take them in
to-morrow."

"I saw you talking to Gryny Lewis in the market," said Ebben Owens.
"What were you saying to him? You weren't such a fool as to tell him
you had received the 40 pounds?"

"Well, yes, indeed I did," replied Gwilym.

"Well, I wouldn't tell him. Don't forget how he stole from Jos
Hughes's till."

"Well, indeed, I never remembered that. Oh, I'll take care of them,"
he said, tying them once more in his bag, and returning them to his
pocket. "I'll put them in my drawer to-night, and to-morrow I'll take
them to the bank."

When Morva returned they were still discussing the preacher's good
fortune in the recovery of the loan which he had almost despaired of.

"Oh, there's glad I am!" said the girl; and Gethin put in a word of
congratulation as he sauntered out to take a last look at the horses.

Long before ten the whole household had retired for the night. Ann and
Morva slept in a small room on the first landing, just beyond which, up
two steps, ran a long passage, into which the other bedrooms opened.

Morva, who generally found the handmaid of sleep waiting beside her
pillow, missed her to-night. Hour after hour she lay silent and
open-eyed, vainly endeavouring to follow Ann into the realms of
dreamland.

Tudor, too, who usually slept quietly in his kennel, seemed disturbed
and restless, and filled the air with mournful howling.

The girl was in that cruellest of all stages of sorrow, when the mind
has but half grasped the meaning of its trouble. She had no name for
the deep longing which rebelled in her heart against the fate that was
closing her in; for she had as yet scarcely confessed to herself that
her whole being turned towards Gethin as the flower to the sun, and
that in her breast, so long calm and unruffled as the pools in the
boggy moor, was