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"Well, well," said the captain, "little did I think the mate of the Gwenllian was the son of my old friend Ebben Owens Garthowen! Why! long ago I have been stopping with him, when he was a young man and I the same.
"I would willingly have thrown it over the docks, if that would blot out one evening behind the broom bushes at Garthowen, and one night when I saw a sight which spoilt my life. It's twenty minutes to the starting time yet, Sara. Art tired, or will I tell the rest of my story?"
He was tall and well grown, like every member of the Garthowen family; his reddish-brown hair so thick above his forehead that his small cap of country frieze was scarcely required as a covering for his head; and not even the coarse material of his homespun suit, or his thick country-made shoes, could hide a certain air of jaunty distinction, which was a subject of derision amongst the young lads of his acquaintance, but of which he himself was secretly proud.
I was at Garthowen in my dream, and I saw a dark figure entering Gwilym Morris's room; he stooped down and opened a drawer, and took something out of it. I could not see the man's face, but it was not thee, Gethin, though thy sudden disappearance made them think at first, that thou wert the thief; only Morva and I knew better.
In the old grey mill in the gorge, which ran up the moor about half a mile beyond Sara's cottage, there was a "sound of revelry by night," for the Garthowen "cynos" was in full swing. It bid fair to be the merriest, heartiest cynos of the year, and Jacob the miller was in his element.
'Garthowen shall not die of grief while I can help him, she said; 'I am going a long journey, child, and ye must not grieve for me; I will come back and bring joy and comfort with me. That's what she said," and Morva nodded her head emphatically.
"No," he answered, "I have promised to go to Caer-Madoc to-morrow." And so Garthowen was empty next day, for Gethin did not return to the midday meal.
A hurried scrap-end of the time at his disposal was spent at Garthowen, where his father was consumed alternately by a feverish longing to see him, and a bitter disappointment at the shortness of his visit. He was beginning to find out that the love almost idolatry which he had lavished upon his son did not bring him the comfort and happiness for which he had hoped.
The muscular power of his arms was well known at Garthowen, and now it stood him in good stead, for calling his full strength to his aid, he succeeded by a sudden wrench in turning the bull's head aside, so that the direct force of his attack came upon the ground instead of the girl's body.
"Of course, my boy," he went on to say in his homely, rugged Welsh, "we will be there to hear you, and I will drive you home in the car, and we will have the fattest goose for dinner, and the best bedroom will be ready for you. These few lines from "Your delighted and loving father, "Garthowen."
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