‘Conduct, yes; I couldn’t doubt you,’ said Chillon.  ’But “the world’s a flood at a dyke for women, and they must keep watch,” you’ve read.’

‘But Owain is not our enemy,’ said Carinthia, in her deeper tones, expressive of conviction, and not thereby assuring to hear.  ’He is a man with men, a child with women.  His Rebecca could describe him; I laugh now at some of her sayings of him; I see her mouth, so tenderly comical over her big “simpleton,” she called him, and loved him so.’

The gentleman appeared on the waste land above the house.  His very loose black suit and a peculiar roll of his gait likened him to a mourning boatswain who was jolly.  In Lord Levellier’s workshop his remarks were to the point.  Chillon’s powders for guns and blasting interested him, and he proposed to ride over from Barlings to witness a test of them.

‘You are staying at Barlings?’ Chillon said.

‘Yes; now Carinthia is at Esslemont,’ he replied, astoundingly the simpleton.

His conversation was practical and shrewd on the walk with Chillon and Carinthia down to Esslemont evidently he was a man well armed to encounter the world; social usages might be taught him.  Chillon gained a round view of the worthy simple fellow, unlikely to turn out impracticable, for he talked such good sense upon matters of business.

Carinthia saw her brother tickled and interested.  A feather moved her.  Full of tears though she was, her, heart lay open to the heavens and their kind, small, wholesome gifts.  Her happiness in the walk with her brother and her friend—­the pair of them united by her companionship, both of them showing they counted her their comrade—­was the nearest to the radiant day before she landed on an island, and imagined happiness grew here, and found it to be gilt thorns, loud mockery.  A shaving North-easter tore the scream from hedges and the roar from copses under a faceless breadth of sky, and she said, as they turned into Esslemont Park lane:  ‘We have had one of our old walks to-day, Chillon!’

‘You used to walk together long walks over in your own country,’ said Mr. Wythan.

‘Yes, Owain, we did, and my brother never knew me tired.’

‘Never knew you confess to it,’ said Chillon, as he swallowed the name on her lips.

‘Walking was flying over there, brother.’

‘Say once or twice in Wales, too,’ Mr. Wythan begged of her.

’Wales reminded.  Yes, ..Owain, I shall not forget Wales, Welsh people.  Mr. Woodseer says they have the three-stringed harp in their breasts, and one string is always humming, whether you pull it or no.’

’That ’s love of country! that ‘s their love of wild Wales, Carinthia.’

There was a quiet interrogation in Chillon’s turn of the head at this fervent simpleton.

‘I love them for that hum,’ said she.  ‘It joins one in me.’

‘Call to them any day, they are up, ready to march!’