of ourselves; and that the
influence of solitude on our hearts and minds has not altered them for
the worse, for it has not embittered us toward our fellow-creatures, and
it has not dried up in us the sources from which harmless occupations
and innocent pleasures may flow refreshingly to the last over the
waste places of human life. Thus much for our own story, and for the
circumstances which have withdrawn us from the world for the rest of our
days.

And now imagine us three lonely old men, tall and lean, and
white-headed; dressed, more from past habit than from present
association, in customary suits of solemn black: Brother Owen, yielding,
gentle, and affectionate in look, voice, and manner; brother Morgan,
with a quaint, surface-sourness of address, and a tone of dry sarcasm in
his talk, which single him out, on all occasions, as a character in our
little circle; brother Griffith forming the link between his two elder
companions, capable, at one time, of sympathizing with the quiet,
thoughtful tone of Owen's conversation, and ready, at another, to
exchange brisk severities on life and manners with Morgan--in short,
a pliable, double-sided old lawyer, who stands between the
clergyman-brother and the physician-brother with an ear ready for each,
and with a heart open to both, share and share together.

Imagine the strange old building in which we live to be really what its
name implies--a tower standing in a glen; in past times the fortress of
a fighting Welsh chieftain; in present times a dreary land-lighthouse,
built up in many stories of two rooms each, with a little modern lean-to
of cottage form tacked on quaintly to one of its sides; the great hill,
on whose lowest slope it stands, rising precipitously behind it; a dark,
swift-flowing stream in the valley below; hills on hills all round, and
no way of approach but by one of the loneliest and wildest crossroads in
all South Wales.

Imagine such a place of abode as this, and such inhabitants of it
as ourselves, and them picture the descent among us--as of a goddess
dropping from the clouds--of a lively, handsome, fashionable young
lady--a bright, gay, butterfly creature, used to flutter away its
existence in the broad sunshine of perpetual gayety--a child of the new
generation, with all the modern ideas whirling together in her pretty
head, and all the modern accomplishments at the tips of her delicate
fingers. Imagine such a light-hearted daughter of Eve as