m was comfortably dark and cool, for thick vines hung about
either window, rustling and tapping pleasantly, and Richard was content.

"She does not love me?" Gwyllem cried. "It is well enough. I do not
come to her as one merchant to another, since love was never bartered.
Listen, Saxon!" He caught up Richard's lute. The strings shrieked
beneath Gwyllem's fingers as he fashioned his rude song.

Sang Gwyllem:

"_Love me or love me not, it is enough
That I have loved you, seeing my whole life is
Uplifted and made glad by the glory of Love--
My life that was a scroll all marred and blurred
With tavern-catches, which that pity of his
Erased, and writ instead one perfect word,
O Branwen!_

"_I have accorded you incessant praise
And song and service long, O Love, for this,
And always I have dreamed incessantly
Who always dreamed, 'When in oncoming days
This man or that shall love you, and at last
This man or that shall win you, it must be
That loving him you will have pity on me
When happiness engenders memory
And long thoughts, nor unkindly, of the past,
O Branwen!'_

"_I know not!--ah, I know not, who am sure
That I shall always love you while I live!
And being dead, and with no more to give
Of song or service?--Love shall yet endure,
And yet retain his last prerogative,
When I lie still, through many centuries,
And dream of you and the exceeding love
I bore you, and am glad dreaming thereof,
And give God thanks therefor, and so find peace,
O Branwen!_"

"Now, were I to get as tipsy as that," Richard enviously thought,
midway in a return to his stolid sheep, "I would simply go to sleep and
wake up with a headache. And were I to fall as many fathoms deep in
love as this Gwyllem has blundered without any astonishment I would
perform--I wonder, now, what miracle?"

For he was, though vaguely, discontent. This Gwyllem was so young, so
earnest over every trifle, and above all so unvexed by any rational
afterthought; and each desire controlled him as varying winds sport
with a fallen leaf, whose frank submission to superior vagaries the boy
appeared to emulate. Richard saw that in a fashion Gwyllem was superb.
"And heigho!" said Richard, "I am attestedly a greater fool than he,
but I begin to weary of a folly so thin-blooded.".

The next morning came a ragged man, riding upon a mule. He claimed to
be a tinker. He chatted out an hour with