CHAPTER XIX.

A WELSH ANTIQUARY.

WHEN Hirell and Kezia went to meet Elias returning from his work in the lower fields next morning, they both asked anxiously about the lodger; and Elias told them it seemed to him Mr. Rymer was in some kind of fever; that he was quiet, and willing to see Dr. Robarts when he should come.

'There is good in him,' said Elias; 'he entreated me like a child to raise the blind, that he might see Criba Ban from where he lay.'

Hirell and Kezia both looked at Rymer's little window, and from it to the mountain, standing, kinglike, above the rest; and both agreed there must be good in thoughts that could like to climb so high. Hirell felt, too, in her own heart, that they would hardly be content to rest there, for there was a flight of great snowy cloud-steps to take them higher still; and the morning sky seemed unfolding brighter and more intense depths of blue.

It was Hugh's last breakfast with them before his departure for London. All had been arranged by the Reverend Ephraim Jones for his entrance into the office of Messrs. Tidman, and his lodging with a Methodist friend, near the chapel where Ephraim Jones himself preached. Though he was not going till the evening, his two small boxes, and the old harp, already stood in the hall, packed and labelled 'London,' and Nanny, whenever she could spare time, went and had a cry by them. More than one of the farm-labourers put their heads in at the door to have a peep at the wonderful address; and several persons came up from Capel Illtyd, in the course of the morning, for the same purpose.

The gamekeeper from Dola' Hudol came with a message from his master, who had always been a sort of patron of Hugh's, to ask him not to go without paying him a farewell visit. So Hugh had to unpack one of the boxes, and put on his best clothes to go down to the great house for half an hour

or so.

He went the nearest way, going from the road at Capel Illtyd and across the fields down into the valley, and in his walk he found how true was the old Welsh proverb, that parting looks are magnifiers of beauty. Never before had the

grass seemed to shine with such emerald brightness, or the plumage of the magpies and sea-gulls flashed above it so dazzlingly white. Was there any place in England where sea and land birds mingled as they did here, making such gladness and life in the air? Even the children playing at holding a grand Eisteddfodau in a ditch came in for a share of his rekindled admiration.

Surely only mountain air, and only Cambrian mountain air could make such tints and outlines, such hardy delicacy of bloom and graceful strength. Two farm-girls passed him, and before they had well got by, they heard him singing a Welsh song:

Full fair the Gleisiad in the flood
Which sparkles 'neath the sun;
And fair the thrush in green abode,
Spreading his wings in sportive fun ;
But fairer look, if truth he spoke,

The maids of County Merion.

As he stood waiting at the little side-door at Dola' Hudol, looking at the sheep grazing in the rich swelling meadow, even they reminded him how clumsy and ungainly the English sheep, which he had seen at Dolgarrog markets, were in comparison with those graceful, agile little creatures, whose pretty intelligent faces were to be seen peering fearlessly over the most giddy heights, along which they ran nimbly as mice.

Hugh was shown into the library, and left there to await Mr. Rhys, who had sent word to him to amuse himself with the harp, or look at anything he liked till he came to him.

Hugh, however, remained standing just where the servant had left him, too much overpowered by the gloom and grandeur of the Welsh antiquarian's 'holy of holies' to move hand or foot.

He had often been in that room before, and been made supremely happy by a sight of those precious relics of the ancient glory of his country. Sometimes Mr. Rhys had read aloud to him from old manuscripts, sitting in his high-backed throne-like chair like a modern Don Quixote; and sometimes he had made Hugh read, or play to him on the magnificent harp, while he leaned back with eyes half-closed, revelling in dreams from which he always rose with a prouder carriage of the head, and more haughty step and voice. Hugh likewise

The Salmon (Mr. Borrow's translation).

would go home with an air of grand melancholy, inspired by the contemplation of his ancestral greatness, and require some rousing words from Elias, before he became sufficiently reconciled to the existing state of affairs, to be able to take his part in the work of the farm.

But in spite of old acquaintance, the library at Dola' Hudol impressed him that morning as much as ever its owner could have desired that a lowly and young Bardic retainer should be impressed by such a sanctuary.

Perhaps the contrast between the great exploits of the noble wearers of those helmets bending over the door and window-frames, and his own narrow path of duty as carved out for him by the Reverend Ephraim Jones, made him feel more intensely his own humbled and their exalted state.

These relics and tokens of past greatness were not exposed in the common light of day.

It

Through the carving of an enormous piece of oak-part of a Gothic screen which blocked up one window, and through the stained glass of another window came such a light as should alone touch those rare mementoes of Kymric glory. showed the antiquity of the books in the dingy oak cases without irreverently exposing their dilapidations. Yet they had been wonderfully well preserved. It was easy to see by the equal yellowness of their pages, and the general dry, crumbling look of their bindings, that no student had given them such destructive usage as Time himself.

Several of these cases had glass slides, which revealed, not books, but vessels of pottery dug up from a British camp; urns with human ashes; two golden sickles of the Druidsone broken, one only a little chipped; incense dishes; a breastplate of richly embossed gold, and several curious drinkingcups. But the most famous of these, the Hirlas, was placed on the slab of slate supposed to be stained by the blood of a martyred warrior. This slab was supported by two blocks of stone, which also had their own marvellous histories engraved upon them in three or four lines of Welsh poetry, now perfectly illegible (with the exception of a name or two) even to Mr. Rhys himself.

Upon this rude but venerated sideboard stood the Hirlasa long blue drinking horn, rimmed with silver, and having attached to it a piece of parchment bearing the following lines in Welsh, from Owain Kyveiliog's poem of the Hirlas

This hour we dedicate to joy,
Then fill the Hirlas horn, my boy,

That shineth like the sea;

Whose azure handles tipped with gold,

Invite the grasp of Britons bold,

The sons of liberty.

Beside the Hirlas was another object on which Hugh's eyes rested with a certain wistful melancholy in their leave-taking glance.

It was not because he had any covetous desire for this ancient and most precious of all his patron's possessions, or any deeper regret in the thought that he might never see it again, than the same thought gave him with regard to all the other things in the room, but because it reminded him of many a boyish ambition, the recollection of which made the taste of his present lot very bitter.

In looking at that bar of twisted gold, four feet long, flexible, bright, and hooked at both ends, Hugh was not now so much inspired with enthusiasm at the thought of how many of the greatest of his country had worn such an ornament as a mark of their rank or valour; he had heard often enough from Mr. Rhys, how Aneurin the bard had worn one at the battle of Cattraeth and Boadicea, when leading the Britons to fight against Agricola. Before his eyes, too, attached to the golden torque, was the boast of Llywarch Hen, Prince and Poet

:

Four-and-twenty sons I have had,

Wearing the golden wreath, leaders of armies.

In Hugh's country, Dwyn y dorch (to win the torque) may occasionally be still heard as a household phrase for winning a prize; and the young man, who had ever loved to talk about the precious relic, had heard it applied to himself so frequently -his torque being fame and wealth-that now he could but look on the object before him with a sense of sharp disappointment and an irrepressible despondency, that made the grand antiquities of Dola' Hudol even dimmer to his eyes than the richly darkened windows made them.

But Hugh would not for worlds have had Mr. Rhys suspect him of any unmanly shrinking from a career his brother had with such difficulty opened for him; and in case he should come upon him suddenly while his throat was so uneasy in Kezia's new collar, and his eyes persisted in seeing the helmets of his patron's great-grandfathers nodding tipsily over the

doors and windows, he crept quietly to his old corner where the harp stood on a sort of little daïs.

Kneeling on the step, and resting his cheek against the gold frame, his hands took from the strings a gentle and comforting sound; and he was soon able to look round him with unflinching eyes, and take his farewell of the great spirits of the past, who seemed to him still to haunt the antiquary's room, swelling the gold breastplates and nodding the helmets. With the humility of the young and lowly bard of a great house, Hugh addressed them all in his wordless song. He told them that for the last time his soul drank to them humbly from the renowned Hirlas; that he was to go forth to a contest arduous and inglorious; to be no winner of the torque in this world, but a suppliant for it in that kingdom to which they had been gathered, and whose honours never tarnish, as that ancient torque, on which he looked, had tarnished.

Hugh's improvised farewell was very sweet and full of patient submission and subdued power.

The music reached the charming old morning room opening into the lawn, which seemed always to cast over it a reflection of its own soft, perpetual light.

Mr. Rhys heard Hugh's playing as he sat here, reading his "Times; and laying down his paper, listened attentively.

Mrs. Rhys was sitting near him, copying a faded little oilpainting, one of his most valued heirlooms. She was succeeding with her task so well as to give him much pleasure, and just now she looked tranquil, almost happy.

She, also, heard Hugh's music, and glanced towards her husband with a smile, showing pleasant approval of his protégé's talent. His face, however, was turned from her as he leaned his elbow on the table, and his head on his hand, and gave his whole attention, as it seemed, to the unconscious Hugh. It was not so much enjoyment of the music, as respect for the national instrument on which Hugh played, that the face of the descendant of the Welsh princes expressed, as he leaned back in his chair listening with half-closed eyes. It was a peculiarly narrow face now, but once, when the cheeks were fuller, must have been of a perfect oval shape; the eyes were large, and almost black; the nose and mouth undisguised by any moustache, and retaining still a noble and graceful contour seldom seen on so old a face. The thick iron-gray hair left bare almost too large and dome-shaped a forehead;