ith strange
pillars and stranger ornaments on the projecting porch; and on one side
a roof dipped down almost to the earth, and in the centre there was
something that might almost be a tower rising above the rest of the
building. Then there were documents that seemed all names and dates,
with here and there a coat of arms done in the margin, and she came upon
a string of uncouth Welsh names linked together by the word 'ap' in a
chain that looked endless. There was a paper covered with signs and
figures that meant nothing to her, and then there were the pocket-books,
full of old-fashioned writing, and much of it in Latin, as her husband
told her--it was a collection as void of significance as a treatise on
conic sections, so far as Mary was concerned. But night after night
Darnell shut himself up with the musty rolls, and more than ever when he
rejoined her he bore upon his face the blazonry of some great adventure.
And one night she asked him what interested him so much in the papers he
had shown her.

He was delighted with the question. Somehow they had not talked much
together for the last few weeks, and he began to tell her of the records
of the old race from which he came, of the old strange house of grey
stone between the forest and the river. The family went back and back,
he said, far into the dim past, beyond the Normans, beyond the Saxons,
far into the Roman days, and for many hundred years they had been petty
kings, with a strong fortress high up on the hill, in the heart of the
forest; and even now the great mounds remained, whence one could look
through the trees towards the mountain on one side and across the yellow
sea on the other. The real name of the family was not Darnell; that was
assumed by one Iolo ap Taliesin ap Iorwerth in the sixteenth
century--why, Darnell did not seem to understand. And then he told her
how the race had dwindled in prosperity, century by century, till at
last there was nothing left but the grey house and a few acres of land
bordering the river.

'And do you know, Mary,' he said, 'I suppose we shall go and live there
some day or other. My great-uncle, who has the place now, made money in
business when he was a young man, and I believe he will leave it all to
me. I know I am the only relation he has. How strange it would be. What
a change from the life here.'

'You never told me that. Don't you think your great-uncle might leave
his house and his money to somebody he knows rea