By Berwen Banks

"Indeed, indeed I will, Miss Powell--you laugh at that--well--may I say

Valmai, then?"

"Yes; why not? Everyone is calling me Valmai, even Shoni our servant."

"I may venture, then; and will you call me Cardo?"

"Yes, indeed; Cardo Wynne. Cardo Wynne, everybody is calling you that,

too--even the little children in the village; I have heard them say,

'Here is Cardo Wynne coming!' See, here is the path to Dinas, I must

say good-bye."

"Can't we have another walk along the beach? Remember, I, too, have no

one to talk to!"

"Oh, anwl, no! I must hurry home and get the tea for the preachers."

"And then back to the meeting on the hillside?"

"No; the meeting is in the chapel to-night."

"But when it is over you will come back along the shore?"

"Indeed, I don't know. Good-bye," she said, as she began her way up

the rugged homeward path.

When Cardo reached home, he found his father sitting at the tea-table.

The old parlour looked gloomy and dark, the bright afternoon sun,

shining through the creepers which obscured the window, threw a green

light over the table and the rigid, pale face of the Vicar.

"You are late Cardo; where have you been?"

"In the long meadow, sir, where I could hear some of the preaching

going on below, and afterwards on the beach; it is a glorious

afternoon. Oh! father, I wish you would come out and breathe the fresh

air; it cannot be good for you to be always in your study poring over

those musty old books."

"My books are not musty, and I like to spend my time according to my

own ideas of what is fit and proper, and I should not think it either

to be craning my neck over a hedge to listen to a parcel of Methodist

preachers--"

"Well, I only heard one, Price Merthyr I think they call him. He was--"

"Cardo!" said his father severely, "when I want any information on the

subject I will ask for it; I want you to set Dye and Ebben on to the

draining of that field to-morrow--"

"Parc y waun?"

"Yes; Parc y waun."

"Right, father," said Cardo good-naturedly. He was devotedly attached

to his father, and credited him with a depth of affection and

tenderness lying hidden behind his stern manner--a sentiment which must

have been revealed to him by intuition, for he had never seen any

outward sign of it. "It's no use," he muttered, as his father rose and

left the room; "it's no use trying to broach the subject to him, poor

fellow! I must be more careful, and keep my thoughts to myself."

Later on in the evening, Valmai sat in the hot, crowded chapel, her

elbows pressed tightly in to her sides by the two fat women between

whom she sat, their broad-brimmed hats much impeding her view of the

preacher, who was pounding the red velvet cushion in the old pulpit,

between two dim mould candles which shed a faint light over his face.

Valmai listened with folded hands as he spoke of the narrow way so

difficult to tread, so wearisome to follow--of the few who walked in it

and the people, listening with upturned faces and bated breath,

answered to his appeal with sighs and groans and "amens." He then

passed on to a still more vivid description of the broad road, so

smooth, so easy, so charming to every sense, so thronged with people

all gaily dancing onwards to destruction, the sudden end of the road,

where it launched its thronging crowds over a precipice into the

foaming, seething sea of everlasting woe and misery.