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CHAPTER V.
THE NEW INMATE

The rain was still coming down with steady persistence when, two hours later, Evan Evans lifted the great wooden latch of Brookside Farm, and entered the large kitchen with a 'God save you' for greeting.

Ales, who was giving the last stir to something bubbling in an iron pot on the fire, whence came a steaming savour of leeks, turned round sharply to see what sort of a young fellow had come into the house as an inmate, and seeing, returned his salutation, as did the two lads waiting for their supper.

What she saw was a strong-limbed young man, about three or four and twenty, with a good-humoured smile upon his face, as if a drenched coat and muddy nether garments were quite minor discomforts. He carried a lighted lanthorn in one hand, and a bundle slung on a stick over his shoulder.

'If you're Evan Evans,' said she, 'you'd best take off your coat, and sit down by the fire to get dry,' a corresponding smile on her face sufficing for a welcome, and indicating her content with the sample as presented.

As if to ensure her good graces, his first act was to step across the floor, and with one strong brown hand lift from the chimney-hook the heavy broth-pot, on the handle of which the girl had just laid both of hers.

'Good for you, Evan Evans; may you be always as ready,' said she, showing her firm white teeth, and hastening to ladle out the broth the boiled beef had supplied.

'Always ready for a good supper,' was the prompt reply. 'One does not always get broth every day.'

Meat was not often boiled for broth then on small farms. Indeed, was never cooked except on rare occasions.

At that moment Mrs. Edwards came in from what we may call the 'dairy' in the rear.

'I did not expect you to-night,' said she, 'but it is well you are here.'

'Sure and indeed, ma'am, you would not have me come on a Friday, and I was not myself like to come on a Saturday, and I thought you would want me before the Monday, look you.'

'Why not Saturday?' interrupted Rhys, waiting impatiently for his broth.

'Sure and "Saturday's flitting is a short sitting" my Irish grandmother was used to say, and she was a wise woman,' answered the young man gravely.

Superstition was so widespread and general, that no one uttered a word of doubt or dissent to either proposition, but Mrs. Edwards remarked, ''Deed and it's quite as well you came. We have lost a week, and it's time some of the roots was out of the ground. It will be soft for the digging after the rain.'

'Do you be having any potatoes among your crops?' he asked then over his steaming bowl of thick broth.

''Deed, no; Edwards' (a sigh) 'said they was only for the gentry to grow in their gardens.'

'Then I would have you try them next year. The head man at Castella says they was the most profitable crop he had on the land. They was good for the cows and the hogs if he had any to spare from the family table. He was be going to plough half an acre of ground for them.'

'Plough? What's that?' questioned Rhys, to whom the very word was unknown.

Evan explained to more than one attentive listener.

'Ah, well,' said Mrs. Edwards, when he had done. 'Where I was in England, every farmer did plough his fields. And my own father used to be saying that the laws King Howel the Good did be making nearly eight hundred years ago, would not allow any man to be a farmer unless he could make his own plough, as well as guide it. But there did be only wooden ploughs in those days, and they did get knocked to bits on the stony ground among the mountains of wild Wales, and they did get out of use, whatever. I did want to have a good strong plough here, but Edwards was always be saying the spade was good enough for him. His father and his grandfather before him had dug every rood of the land with the spade, and what was good enough for them was good enough for him.'

'Good enough's all very well where there's never a better,' thrust in go-ahead Ales, with the freedom of the time. 'You didn't be thinking your grandmother's distaff good enough for you when you bought that spinning-wheel.'

Both Evan and Rhys looked up from their half-empty bowls across the table at Ales, as if struck by her pertinent shrewdness.

'Indeed, Ales, I did not; nor did I think holes that let in the wind and weather along with the light good enough. But till the grandfather did die of rheumatics there could be no glass windows. And I did not think it good for the pigs to run loose, rooting up my garden and destroying what they could not eat, but there has never been a sty built to this day.'

'And what's a sty?' asked Rhys.

'A house for the hogs.'

Rhys laughed. 'Why, mother, who ever did see pigs with a house of their own? All pigs run loose in the woods. Lewis did say to me he never saw any but ours shut up in a fold like sheep.'

'Never mind Lewis. He has never gone far from Eglwysilan. If he had been in England as I was before I married, he would have been seeing pig-styes on every farm. But there be plenty in Wales, and Evan will set up one here very soon.'

'Yes, indeed,' was the man's hearty response.

There was some further talk over work to be done, and how it was to be done, before Evan followed Rhys to bed, neither having a word to say against overcrowding, although David was there before them.

And then Mrs. Edwards and Ales, comparing notes, agreed that she had hired a very capable man.

It might have been said with equal propriety that the widow had shown her own capability in the choice of a farm-servant who would live in close companionship with her fatherless sons.

Over the board set forth with funeral meats she had named her want among the assembled relatives, and then had ensued a warm controversy on the merits of various men likely to be at the Caerphilly hirings.

Some one had named Evan Evans. Thereupon arose a general outcry that he would ruin the farm with the notions he had picked up at Castella, where there was an English farm-bailiff. It was admitted that he was hard-working, honest, sober, and religious, but all these were as dust in the balance compared with the crime of departing from the old ways, and preferring new methods of husbandry.

She had listened, making no comments. But she had hired the young fellow the more readily for those very detractions. She had not found the old ways pleasant or profitable. She meant to show Mr. Pryse what good farming could do for but indifferent land. And she counted on Evan's religious principles as warrants for the example he would set before her growing boys.

The hiring was for the year, and could only be terminated by mutual agreement. At the same time it was renewable from year to year, and sometimes both men and maids remained with the same master or mistress half their lives. If any breach of contract occurred, the law was very strict and severe. A prison awaited the servant absent without leave, or wilfully refractory, and heavy fines the masters who ill-treated the servants so hired. Such cases were not frequent, but they did occur at intervals.

Though the sky was clear, the rain was still dripping from the eaves, and had worn little runnels in the soil and between the grey stones on its way down hill to swell the noisy woodland brook, when Evan and the boys turned out of their close and darkened bedroom in the morning, and Rhys volunteered to show the former over the farm before the others were up.

''Deed, no,' said the man, 'that do be your mother's place. She might not be liking us to make so free, whatever. We can make up the fire, and set on the porridge-pot for Ales, to lose no time. Where are the fire-balls kept?'

This was a check to the boy's newly-born importance. Not choosing to wait upon the man, he ordered Davy to fetch the fire-balls, and marched out at the back in some dudgeon. Meanwhile, bidable Davy brought the fire-balls. Evan, all unconscious of the young master's wounded dignity, fanned the smouldering peat on the hearth to a glow, and had a clear fire under the black pot when Ales and her mistress came upon the scene, leaving Jonet and William still asleep.

The morning ablutions of Evan and the two elder boys were performed in the open air, at a spring which gushed from the stony mountain-side into a natural water-worn basin; Mrs. Edwards and Ales in the nondescript apartment in the rear, there being little time or ceremony wasted in the operation.

The rough-and-ready toilette completed, Ales went back to the kitchen; and the sun having just risen above the mountain-top to waken up bird and beast, and turn the lingering rain-drops into fairy gems, Mrs. Edwards herself led Evan over the primitive homestead, from the rude stabling and cowshed, where the fowls roosted overhead, to the dilapidated thing they called a barn, and the sodden farmyard, where a huge sow and her brood of piglings lay wallowing in the mire.

Two years earlier the young man would have looked on all with complacency as the common state of things; but then he could only shake his head and coincide with his new mistress that there was room for improvements that would require time, energy, and some outlay. They had looked into the orchard, and at the stone fences, and, the survey over, came in at the front, where Mrs. Edwards had done her ineffectual best to copy an English garden for herbs and flowers, and to keep out pigs, poultry, and goats.

By this time Ales and offended Rhys were back from milking, the two little ones were washed and dressed, and the porridge was ready for pouring out, quiet Davy having lent a hand wherever needed, without any fuss or assumption. He was always ready to fetch and carry at any one's bidding, and was seldom allowed to sit still. It was he who had brought water from the spring to wash the younger ones, and emptied it when used; he who had laid wooden bowls and spoons on the table and brought in the great brown pitcher of milk, and was lifting William to his seat at the table when his mother and Evan came in at the door. Just docile Davy, of whom nobody made much account either to praise or blame.

Rhys, who had not yet recovered his composure, had already taken his seat at the table in silent displeasure, and took no note of their entrance, but both Jonet and William stared hard at the strange man, the former shyly, the latter with open-mouthed wonder, which he put into words.

'Who's 'oo?' he wanted to know when Evan drew his stool to the table beside him.

Being answered pleasantly, he rained childish questions thick and fast on the 'strange man,' all relative to his presence there, and was barely silenced when grace was said over the hot porridge. There had been so many strange men coming and going in the past week that he wondered if Evan had been left behind. His queries only ceased with a scalded mouth.

'If you want to learn farming, Rhys, you had better come with Evan and me. We are going over the fields to settle what is best to be done,' said his mother when breakfast was over.

Had his mother asked him to go along with her to settle what had best to be done, and how, he would have risen with alacrity to share her cares and counsels, but much as he had professed his desire to learn he did not want Evan Evans for a teacher. Had not his interest and curiosity been excited overnight, he might have lingered behind, so sore was he from the morning's rebuff. As it was he rose but sullenly to obey.

'May I come?' asked Davy.

''Deed, no. You will be wanted here. Get your knitting and mind Jonet and Willem.'

The peremptory reply served for both Davy and Jonet, though the latter did put a pouting finger to her lips. But William had ideas and a will of his own.

'Me go with 'oo!' 'Me must go!' 'Me will go!' 'Man, take me!' were his persistent iterations, while his sturdy bare legs and feet went pattering after his elders over the rain-washed stones, and he struggled with all his little might against the attempts of Rhys to force him back.

Their wills were equally strong, but their strength was not. No doubt Rhys clutched the tender arms too tightly, for William screamed and cried out —

''Oo hurt me; 'oo hurt me.'

Evan, who had reached the gateway with Mrs. Edwards, turned back, saying pitifully, 'Don't be hurting the little man. If your mother do be willing to let him go, I will carry him on my shoulders, look you.'

In another minute, triumphantly, masterful William was mounted on the low stone wall, on his way to the big man's shoulders, his mother smiling a passive consent, whilst Rhys bit his under lip and clenched his hands tightly in ill-concealed chagrin.

It was the second time that morning Evan Evans, the hired man, had thwarted him, his father's first-born. Rhys, in his own opinion, had ceased to be a boy. He had quite decided that he was to be his mother's right-hand man, and that they would manage the farm between them, with underlings of course, and here was this great interloper come and thrusting him into the background.

It was with no good will he followed over grass land and arable, over the fallow and on to the high moorland, where the cows ruminated among the tall grasses, and the sheep nibbled close to the ground the sweet morsels the cows had left, and the omnivorous goats browsed on heather or anything else in the way of vegetation. He heard them talk of the carrots and other roots to be dug up and housed at once, of the lime and farm manure to be laid on this field or that, and the suitable crops to be raised; but though he had a crude perception that Evan was a better farmer than his father, he sullenly resented the change in contemplation. All the more, perhaps, because his mother called for his attention, with 'You hear this, Rhys?' 'Yes, Rhys; indeed, that will be best.'

He gloomed, whilst William, released from his perch, ran hither and thither in high glee, chasing away the rooks and water-wagtails that were, unsuspectedly, doing the farmer good service.

CHAPTER VI.
LOST

It is difficult in these days of chemistry, steam, and mechanical contrivances for reducing labour – if not for dispensing with it altogether – to realise the difficulties attending the farmer in wild mountainous districts, far removed from the centres of civilisation, and unacquainted with the agricultural implements and appliances even then in use in more favoured districts. Places where there were no carts and no proper roads, and where the ascents and descents were too abrupt for anything but a biped or a mule; where every acre of the cultivated mountain or moorland had to be turned over with the spade, and every particle of manure laid on the land had to be carried thither in baskets strapped on human shoulders, or in panniers borne by ass or mule.

Yet, such were the difficulties Mrs. Edwards and other Welsh farmers had to contend with even up to the present century, the moorland farmers of Cumberland and the North-West Riding of Yorkshire being somewhat similarly situated.

The loss of a whole week's labour at the beginning of October was a serious detriment. Even Rhys knew that, and finding that he was to take his instructions from his mother and not from Evan, he smothered his ill-humour and buckled to in earnest, though his brows contracted when a new form of labour was suggested to him.

'Rhys, do you think you could cut down the bracken at the edge of the wood?' asked his mother dubiously.

'Yes, surely, I can cut it. Did I not help to reap the oats? But why should it be cut?'

'Evan says it will save straw in the farmyard, and should be stacked for bedding for the pigs and cattle before it do be too late. And after it has served the beasts, it will be better for some of the land than lime.'

''Deed, an' Evan do seem mighty clever! Houses and bedding for pigs indeed!'

'Yes, indeed, Rhys, and I am not too proud or too old to learn from him. Please God, he will be helping us to keep the farm in spite of Mr. Pryse.'

Not another word of scorn fell from the boy's lips.

Bidding Lewis, the shepherd's son, follow with Breint, the pony, to carry home the fern, as instructed by his mother, he, with a sickle over his arm, took his way across a grassy slope towards the steep woodland, stepping alongside the musical runnel the gushing hill-side spring sent, as overflow from a huge stone trough or basin, across the land and down the incline to join the tumbling brook from which the farm derived its name. The tawny brook itself had its source high up in the peaty moss on the mountain-top, and had worn, or found, a channel in a narrow cleft between precipitous rocks, whose seamy sides barely afforded foothold for fir and larch. Yet widening and deepening into a picturesque glen, the ash and the elder hung out their red or purple-black berries over the noisy and tumbling watercourse, and the sturdy trunks of oak and beech uprose and spread out leafy arms to shade it from the too intrusive westering sun, dropping in a ripe acorn or a triangular nut quietly now and then, to float away and fructify in a future season far from the parent tree.

It was otherwise when the wild north-east winds came rushing and roaring down the glen, for then ripe or unripe acorns and prickly mast were torn rudely away along with shoals of russet leaves and flung to the ground as offerings to the hogs and omnivorous goats, the brook coming in for its share, as well as the fringe of feathery ferns.

The larger portion of the farm lands were on the steep but undulating uplands above the white homestead, the more fertile, including the orchard and the garden-plot, lying below.

Bordered on either side by rough stone fences, and separating the grass land from these, a wider well-trodden path or road, which the flaky character of the stony ground converted into a natural succession of broad shallow steps, trended obliquely from the house to the level or main road such as it was. Across this, some two hundred yards farther north, the simple brook spread itself out and chafed at the stepping-stones which barred its passage to deeper woods and the great river that would swallow it up. Just as some thoughtless youth rushes from the safe shelter of a home too narrow for his ambition, and plunging into the vortex of the untried world is lost for ever.

Some thirty or forty paces beyond the shallow brook stood the low cottage of Owen Griffith, whitewashed like the larger farm above. Then the lane took a turn and was crossed by intersecting roads perplexing to strange travellers.

The outskirts of a flourishing and busy town now cover much of the land I have described so carefully. Even the lanes and highways have undergone changes since the Edwardses held Brookside Farm and traversed them.

On that sunny October forenoon, while Rhys and Lewis cut down fern on the borders of the wood, and Evan plied his spade to turn over the stubble in good furrows higher up the hill, Mrs. Edwards midway, like a true Welsh farmer's wife, resolutely dug up the long-rooted, tenacious carrots, sparing not her toil, whilst Davy (again in petticoats) and even four-year-old Jonet freed them from the loosened earth, and cast them into wicker baskets for Ales to carry from the field to the barn, poised on her head. The basket was not light when full, but she stepped along with ease and grace, knitting as she went or came, only tucking the rapidly increasing stocking in her girdling apron-string whilst she emptied her load, or changed an empty basket for a full one.

At first, imitative William insisted on helping, or hindering, Davy and Jonet, and for a while was as busy as the rest. Then he began to trot beside Ales as she went to and fro. After a time the little bare legs grew weary, and when the toilers rested on upturned baskets, to take their noontide meal of oaten cake and buttermilk, he was almost too sleepy to eat or drink, and, resting his sunny head against his mother's knee, fell off into a doze.

Seeing that, Ales promptly lifted him up in her strong arms, and, carrying him to the farm, laid him on his mother's bed and left him there, as she thought, secure from harm.

Once or twice, after emptying her baskets in the barn, she came down to the house and found him sleeping peacefully. So an hour and a half must have slipped by, perhaps more, when turning in to look at her charge, she found the room vacant.

Still, she was beset by no apprehensions of ill. She made up the smouldering fire, and did one or two little household matters before she went back to the field with her empty basket, nothing doubting but she would find the boy with his mother. He knew his way about the farm.

'Is not Willem with you?' she cried out as she neared the group in the field. 'He is not in bed.'

'Not in bed?' echoed his mother, but without alarm. ''Deed then, he will have gone to Evan or to Rhys. That will be it. He will have met Lewis with the pony, and got a ride in one of the empty panniers.'

'Sure, and that's most like.'

But on her next journey to the barn she saw Lewis bringing up the pony laden with the panniers of bracken, but no child. Hastily ridding herself of her load, she waited until he came near. Then she called out —

'Have you seen Willem?'

''Deed, no! Is he lost again?' came back in reply.

'Lost? Name o' goodness, I hope not! Mistress will go distracted if he is. Empty your bracken, and keep a look-out; I'm off up the hill to Evan.'

And away she sped at flying speed, straight as an arrow, over field and fallow. Her heart sank as she came in sight of Evan digging away as if his life depended on his day's labour, companioned only by feathered searchers for the worms he brought to light.

'Evan!' she screamed, affrighted at last, 'have you seen Willem? We cannot find him anywhere, whatever.'

Down went the man's spade, and over the freshly-turned ground he came bounding, in spite of his wooden-soled shoes. 'You don't mean to say the child is lost?' he cried.

But she was already running back to her mistress, who took the alarm as soon as they came in sight, and clasping her hands in sudden terror, shrieked out, 'Oh, what is it? What has happened to my boy? Where is my darling Willem? Oh, if I lose him too, I shall go crazy!'

Her only thought was that the child, in seeking Rhys, had fallen over a rock and been killed.

Her shriek, her unbidden tears, communicated her fright to Jonet and Davy, who clung to her skirts and cried for companionship, Jonet hardly knew why.

There was a general rush to meet Rhys.

'Sure, he will be in the orchard,' said he confidently.

But he was not in the orchard, not anywhere on the farm.

''Deed, and I think he will be for going to the church,' put in Davy. 'He wanted to be going yesterday, look you!'

The idea was instantly caught up. Evan and Rhys were off in search, and Lewis after them. Ales in vain endeavoured to persuade the mother to remain behind, whilst she went up to the moor, to see if he had strayed thither after the sheep. 'Don't fret,' she said, 'they are certain to be bringing him back soon. His little legs would not carry him far.'

'Oh, Ales,' expostulated her mistress, 'how can you ask me to sit still while my darling Willem may be dead or in danger?'

'Mother,' said Davy, with a gulp to swallow a sob, 'I will stay and take care of Jonet if you both go. You will be good with me, won't you, Jonet?'

'Yes, indeed,' replied the little girl, as his arm stole protectingly round her shoulders, and he kissed her tear-stained face, 'I will be very good.'

So, with strong injunctions not to go away, the two children were left alone in the house, with only a grey cat and a rough dog to bear them company.

At first they sat still and waited expectantly, clinging to each other. Then the silence and solitude became oppressive. Presently Jonet began to cry for her missing playfellow, and when brave-hearted Davy failed to console her, his own tears began to fall. A dreadful fear began to creep over him lest William should be lost like his father, and they might never see him again. How long the time did seem to those two children left alone with a new fear!

Ales was the first to return. She found the two seated on the stone stile in front that commanded a view of the steep path, anxiously and with beating hearts watching for some one to come.

She brought them no good news, and was off again with stool and pail, for the cows were lowing to be milked. But her very coming had broken up the dreary silence and monotony. And when she went she left them milk and cake, and the consciousness she was not far away. Then, at her suggestion, Davy began to teach Jonet to knit, and in the occupation time passed less painfully.

Ales came back with her milk-pails, and commended them for being good; made up the fire and set on the pot for supper. And so long as the setting sun shone redly in through door and windows they were passive, and she bustled about her household affairs, hiding her own fears.

But the sun set, and dusk came down, yet never a foot came near the farm to say the boy was found.

Then Evan came up for lanthorns to renew the search. He said he had been to the very church gates, but could find no trace of the child. Owen Griffith had left his loom, and his wife had kept watch to give each returning seeker news of the others. Mrs. Edwards was then at the weaver's in pitiable distress, and Rhys rushing hither and thither almost as wild.

The two children, unwilling to go to bed, had fallen asleep huddled together in the chimney corner, when, between nine and ten o'clock, restless Ales thought she heard a shout, and before she could get to the door in burst Rhys, crying out, 'He is found! he is found!' and close at his heels came Evan with the poor wanderer in his arms, limp and helpless, his hair and his clothes saturated with heavy dew or mist, his little bare feet cut and bleeding, his lips and hands stained with the juice of purple berries.

The woods and every possible nook and corner seemed to have been explored, when Evan chanced to question a young man upon the Merthyr Road. The stupid fellow stared vacantly, then blundered out, ''Deed, an' sure I did hear something about an hour ago up by the Druid Stones, but I took it for a stray lamb bleating for the ewe.'

'Well, sure, and it might be a child crying. I didn't go to see,' he replied stupidly to a second question.

Evan stopped to hear no more. Without seeking a regular path, he made his way through bush and bramble, over rock and hollow, and there in the very midst of the hoary circle of lichen-covered grey stones, which seemed to sentinel him round in upright double file, the light of the lanthorn revealed the child lying in a heap under the overhanging shadow of the great rocking-stone, his head pillowed on the arm that rested against its conical base. Had the child mistaken those grey stones for the upright slabs in the churchyard?

The first rejoicing over, and the boy in bed, Rhys and Ales were both of opinion that he should be 'well whipped in the morning to teach him better than to put people in such frights.' And no doubt Evan was of the same mind, though he made no remark.

But the tender-hearted mother could only thank God for his restoration, and say that he had punished himself quite sufficiently. He was not likely to stray again.

Not for some time, for though all his garments were woollen, as were those of his elders, the damp, the exposure, no less than his childish terror, laid him up with a feverish illness that lasted for weeks.

As well as could be made out from his disjointed confession, Davy's conjecture had been the true one.

He had wakened, found himself alone, and had set off to 'see the big church,' nothing doubting he should find Robert Jones and his donkey to help him on his way. He had gone splashing through the shallow brook, and past Owen Griffith's unseen, but when he came to the bisecting roads his memory failed; he hesitated, turned to the right instead of the left, trudged on manfully northward, then took a by-path up-hill, as he fancied to the church, got bewildered among walls and winding ways, and out on the wild moor, stopping here and there to rest or gather blackberries, for he was growing both weary and hungry. But he never felt the solitude oppressive whilst there was a bird or a stray sheep about. And it was not until the dusk began to gather and he sank utterly exhausted under the great rocking-stone, that his courage forsook him, and he cried piteously in his hungry loneliness and desolation, cried himself into the insensibility of sleep, with only night and the everlasting arms around him.

In losing himself had he lost his childish craving to see once more that wonder of wonders – the big church?