e I have: for all it trembles so, my
voice can be heard when it curses from Anglesea to Walladmor. Not all
the waves of the sea can cry it down."

"But why must Edward Nicholas be hanged?"

"Oh, my sly Sir, you would know my secret--would you? You're a lawyer,
I believe. But stay--I'll tell you why he must be hanged:" and here she
raised her withered arm to the stars which were just then becoming
visible in the dusk. Pointing with her forefinger to a constellation
brighter than the rest, she said----

"There was a vow made when he was born; and it's written amongst the
stars. And there's not a letter in that book that can ever be blotted
out. I can read what's written there. Do you think that nobody's barns
must be hanged but mine?"

"But who then was it, my good Mrs. Godber, that hanged your son?"

"Who should it be but the old master of Walladmor? He knows by this
time what it is to have the heart-ache. Oh kite! he tore my lamb from
me. But, hark in your ear--Sir Lawyer! I visited his nest, old ravening
kite! High as it was in the air, I crept up to his nest: I did--I did!"
And here she clapped her hands, and expressed a frantic exultation:
but, in a moment after, she groaned and sate down; and, covering her
face with her hands, she burst into tears; and soon appeared to have
sunk into thought, and to be unconscious of Bertram's presence.

Once more he attempted to rouse her attention by asking the road to Ap
Gauvon; but the sound of his voice only woke her into expressing her
thoughts aloud:

"Nay, nay,--my old gentleman, that's a saying that'll never come true:

When black men storm the outer door,
Grief than be over At Walladmor!

It's an old saying I'll grant, but it's a false one: grief will never
be over at Walladmor: that's past all black men's healing!"

"But, Mrs. Godber, will you not come with me to Griffith ap Gauvon;"

She started up at the words _Ap Gauvon_; without speaking a word, she
drew her cloak about her; and, as if possessed by some sudden
remembrance, she strode off at so rapid a pace over the moor that
Bertram had some difficulty in keeping up with her. This however he
determined to do: for he remarked that her course lay towards a
towering range of heights which seemed to overlook the valley in which
they were walking, and which he had reason to believe was a principal
range of Snowdon: he had been nearing it through the whole afternoon;
and he knew that Ap Gauvon lay s