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She understood now why Gethin had gone away so suddenly and mysteriously. Morva's love for him she saw with clear insight, and, above all, the cause of Ebben Owens's increasing gloom. How simple all was now, and how happy was she in the prospect of helping them all.
Reaching the broom bushes, Gethin waited in their shadows, recalling every word and every look of Morva's on that well-remembered night, when she had turned away from him so firmly, though so sorrowfully. Waiting, he paced the greensward, sometimes stopping to toss a pebble over the cliffs, and ever watching where on the grey moor a little spark of light shone from Sara's window. Was he mistaken?
Both my boys gone from me for ever!" Ann and Gwilym's arguments were quite unheeded. Morva's sympathy alone seemed to have any consoling effect upon him. She would kneel beside him with her elbows on his knees, looking up into his face, and with make-believe cheerfulness would reason with a woman's inconsequence, fearlessly deducing results from causes which had no existence.
A crimson tide of joy rushed up into Morva's face, and an embarrassment which she turned away to hide, but which was not lost upon Sara. "Well, indeed, then," said the girl, "there's glad 'n'wncwl Ebben will be. Will I go and tell him when I have finished my bwdran?" "No, no, better not tell him anything till Gethin arrives.
And she took the girl's strong, firm hand in her own, so frail, so slender, and so soft. Morva's eyes filled with tears. "Mother, I am happy, I think. Why should I not be? They are all so kind to me at Garthowen, and I love them all so much. I would lay my life down for them, mother, and still be happy!" "Yes, child, I believe thou wouldst. Come to supper, the cawl is ready."
For Morva's love he would willingly have laid down his life; but now that that was denied him, nothing else was of any consequence; and in troubled thought he sauntered out to cross the farmyard on his way to Pont-y-fro.
There was hardly an hour in the day when Morva's song might not be heard filling the autumn air with melody, for how could she help singing as she sat knitting on the moorside while she watched the cattle, and kept them from roaming too near the edge of the cliff. On the brow of the hill Gethin was harrowing.
The girl ran up, passing Tudor on the stairs, who entered the kitchen with waving tail and glistening eyes carrying in his mouth a canvas bag from which hung a draggled pink tape, and at the same moment Morva's voice was heard calling, "Oh, anwl! come up and see!" Ann and Gwilym hurried up, followed by Ebben Owens and Will, to find Morva pointing to the floor which was strewn with pieces of gold.
The cause of Morva's sadness she guessed at, but how to remove it, or how to bring back the peace and happiness that seemed to have deserted the old Garthowen homestead, she saw not yet.
"Then at the bottom he had written, 'Hallelujah, Amen! Gethin Owens Garthowen." A smile overspread Sara's countenance as she observed Morva's solemnity, a smile which somewhat lessened the girl's disquietude. "Was it so very wicked, mother?" "Wicked? No," said the old woman.
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