avoided, but if you think it is the right
thing for me to do I will do it."

"I am sure it is! I'm sure it is!" said the vicar, taking snuff
vigorously; "so I shall expect you. Well, Miss Ann, I beg pardon--Mrs.
Morris, I mean, I have not congratulated you yet. 'Pon me word, I am
very neglectful; but I do so now heartily, both of you. May you live
long and be very happy. In fact, my call was intended for the bride
and bridegroom as well as for my young friend here. And where is Morva
Lloyd? She works with you, does she not?"

"She's at home to-day. 'Tis a holiday for her.

"She is a great favourite of mine; what a sweet girl she is! I never
have a great beauty pointed out to me but I say 'Very lovely; but not
so lovely as Morva of the Moor.'"

"Yes; she is a wonderful girl," said Ann, "for a shepherdess."

"Well, yes!" said Gwilym Morris; "I think she owes her charm in a great
measure to her foster-mother. Do you know old Sara?"

"Oh, yes!" said the vicar; "we have all heard of old Sara ''spridion.'
Something uncanny about the old woman, they say. But, 'pon me word,
there is something very interesting about her, too."

"Yes," said Gwilym Morris, "she has a wonderful spiritual insight, if I
may call it so. She often shocks me by her remarks, but if I lay a
subject before her upon which I have been pondering deeply but have not
succeeded in elucidating, she grasps its meaning at once and explains
it to me in simple words, and I come away wondering where the
difficulty lay."

After the vicar was gone, Will accompanying him half a mile down the
road, the whole family were loud in his praise.

"There's a man now!" said Ebben Owens; "if every clergyman was like him
'twould be a good thing for the Church. No difference to him whether a
man is a Methodist, a Baptist, or a Churchman, always the same pleasant
smile and warm greeting for them all, and as much at home in a
Dissenter's house as a Churchman's."

"Yes, a true Christian," said Gwilym Morris, "and so genial and
pleasant. At 'Bethel' on Wednesday night, when Jones 'Bethesda' was
preaching, he was there, and seemed much impressed by the sermon; and
well he might be! I have never heard such an eloquent preacher.
Wasn't he, Ann?"

"Oh, beautiful!" she replied. "I wish Mr. Price could have stopped to
tea, but, of course, that meeting prevented him."

Next day when Will, having rung the bell, stood waiting on the vicar's
doorstep, he was certai