old woman, with a patient smile;
"that makes no difference in God's plans. Thou must pluck up thy
heart, and have courage, child, for there is a long life before thee.
A dark cloud is shading thy path now, but 'twill pass away, and thou
wilt be happy again."

"Never! unless Gethin comes back to clear his name. Oh! 'tis a cold
grey world. Only here with you, mother, is the comfort of love. When
I draw near the cottage I look out for your red mantle, and if I see
it, it sends a warm glow through me."

And so they talked until, as the twilight gathered round them, Morva
said:

"I must go; the cows must be milked. Poor Garthowen is a sad house
to-day! I wish I could comfort them a little, but 'tis all dark."

And as she crossed the moor to the Cribserth, she looked round her, but
found no shred of comfort. The sea, all rough and torn by the high
wind, looked cold and cruel; the brow of the hill, which Gethin's
whistle had so often enlivened, looked bare and uninteresting; the moor
had lost its gorgeous tints; a rock pigeon, endeavouring to reach its
nest, was driven by the wind against a thorn bush.

"Tis pricked and beaten like me," thought the girl, and struggling with
the high wind, she helped the bird with tender fingers to extricate
himself.

When she entered the farmyard Daisy stood waiting, and Morva, knowing
that without her song there would be no milk, began the old refrain,
but her voice broke, and while she sang with trembling lips the tears
ran down her cheeks.

The news of Gethin's absence was soon bruited abroad, and many were the
conjectures as to its cause.

"He seemed so jolly at the cynos," said the farm servants; "who'd have
thought his heart was away with the shipping and the foreign ports?"

"Well, well," said the farmers, "Garthowen will have to do without
Gethin Owens, that's plain; the roving spirit is in him still, and
Ebben Owens will have to look alive, with only Ann and Gwilym Morris to
help him."

"Well, he needn't be so proud, then! Will a clergyman indeed! 'tis at
home at the plough I'd keep him!"

But nobody knew anything of the robbery, which added so much poignancy
to the sorrow at Garthowen. Ebben Owens seemed to take his son's
disappearance much to heart, and to feel his absence more in sorrow
than in anger.

Will grew more and more irritable, so that it was almost a relief when
one day in the following week he took his departure for Llaniago, his
father accompan