The Making of William Edwards Part 12

'Is it doing well to call names and be striking his brother?'

Ales had no direct answer to that. 'Rhys says you are idle and should be made to work. You do be playing with stones when you should be weeding or knitting. _He_ does always be working hard,' she replied evasively.

Prompt was the retort, 'A big man should work, I will do better work than Rhys when I am as big. 'Deed I will.'

This conversation had taken place during the hasty ablutions of Ales, who had latterly grown uncommonly anxious to present 'a shining morning face' to Evan when he appeared. As she combed out her hair at the diminutive looking-gla.s.s he had bought her, as a hint, and which hung beside the storehouse door, she began in an insinuating tone--

'And where did you be going yesterday, Willem? Did you be with Robert Jones?'

'Never be you minding,' said the boy, walking past with a pitcher of water for the porridge. And no further information could she or any one else extract from him.

After that, whenever Rhys and he came into collision he disappeared, and none could say whither he went or with whom. Cate or Owen Griffith might see him pa.s.s the cottage door, and exchange a 'good-day' greeting, but beyond that his wanderings were unknown.

In a mountainous parish like Eglwysilan, where was no village community, where farms and cottages were mostly solitary and far apart, there was little chance of encountering many strollers out of the main highway, except on market-days.

Wandering aimlessly in his blind pa.s.sion, on the day when Rhys had struck him, hardly noting the way he went, he found himself all on a sudden on what appeared to be a short, gra.s.s-grown roadway, bordered on both sides by upright blocks of stone, more stunted and less shapely than the slabs in the churchyard, but planted there with so much method in their irregular intervals, they might indeed have been dwarf guards to some great giant turned suddenly to stone by the magic art of a still greater necromancer of the olden time, as he had heard.

Such legends were common on the domestic hearth. So that, although it was a bright spring afternoon, an eerie feeling crept over the pa.s.sionate boy, especially when he found himself within a wide circle of such stones, surrounding, in double file, a huge angular ma.s.s of like stone, narrowing downwards from a flat top, capped by a second stone, and delicately poised on the rounded point of a small conical base in a hollowed depression of the natural rock, and in some sort bearing out the simile of the petrified giant's throne.

As William looked upon this unshapely ma.s.s, some dreamy recollection floated through his mind of having visited the spot before, when the stones had seemed alive, and making mouths at him. Without nearing the central stone, but keeping his eye upon it, he walked slowly round within the inner circle, and, as he went discovered a second path (leading north) corresponding with the one by which he had entered from the south.

Then it dawned upon him this must indeed be the spot where he had lain down faint and tired, when he was, oh, such a little boy, and had been so frightened by the grim aspect of the stones, as the dark night had come on, and he could not rise to get away.

Soon he ventured to touch the large central stone that had terrified him before by giving way on the pressure of his tiny hand. It swayed and rocked to and fro, and he drew back instinctively, but it did not fall.

And now he knew it surely for the great rocking-stone, and no longer feared that it would fall and crush him so long as he was good and true, for so the legend ran.

But now other doubts and fears oppressed him. These would be the very Druid-stones Owen Griffith had named, and Robert Jones had warned him not to seek, lest some great harm should come to him.

Was it true there were once men called Druids, and did they come to life at midnight and nod to the moon, and to the big nodding-stones? Robert Jones and Ales both said they did, though they had never ventured there at midnight to see. They only looked like ill-shaped stones, too little for men. But had they not made faces at him when he was a bit of a baby crying there in the dark?

The boy's heart sank. He was not proof against the grim and weird recollection. He took to his heels and ran out of the memory-haunted circle by the stone-guarded avenue next to him, nor stopped until he had left the desolate and barren spot far behind.

But where was he? That was not the way towards home. He stood on a wild heath, high above the valley of the Taff, with the mountain rising and stretching far away on his right hand, with here and there labourers tilling the red-brown upland fields, and children at work beside them, as he should have been working 'but for Rhys,' he told himself.

He did not know, and could not see it, but the Merthyr Tydvil road, such as it was, lay sunk between the heath and the receding mountain. He had only to gain that, and turn completely round, to find his way homeward.

He looked to the wooded declivity on his left, where birds were calling to their mates under the swelling pinky buds or pale-green opening fans, and the odour of wood violets came sweetly fresh in every breath he drew. A rabbit rose and scuttered past him, and made for the underwood, where the golden crosiers of trooping ferns were uncurling in their beauty. The river ran far below, ran with an inviting rush. One moment, and the boy had plunged into the wood. 'He would _not_ hurry home to be struck by Rhys.'

He could easily find his way back with the river to guide him.

So, now slipping, now catching at the trunk of a tree to maintain a foothold, he scrambled nearer to the river's brink, where was no more perceptible path than what had been made by intruders like himself. Once there he fancied the water was more than commonly disturbed; it was here and there flecked with foam and swirled in eddies. 'Surely the river must be in flood,' he said to himself.

A little way off a well-dressed young man was seated on a stone, fishing with rod and line.

William had no shyness. 'Why does the water make such a noise to-day, and be so rough?' he asked.

'Don't you know? It is from the falls. The river is always noisy here.

It is louder higher up the stream.'

'Oh,' said William; 'what are the falls?'

'Indeed you had better go on a bit farther and see for yourself, my lad.

But be careful how you go.'

The spirit of adventure was on the boy. He thanked the man and did 'go on,' until he stood still with amazement, for there the full river came leaping down, in broken falls, from rock to intercepting rock, some fifteen feet in all; but they might have been fifty for what the home-kept boy knew.

Strange is the fascination of living, leaping water. He stood there gazing spellbound, lost in admiration, listening to the tumultuous uproar, as the swift waters came rushing and flashing downwards, striking themselves against the rocks into angry foam that William mentally compared to suds when Ales was washing, only he never had seen washing on so large a scale. If there were finer cascades in the world he had not seen them. He was fascinated by what he did see, and lingered long.

'I wonder if Rhys or Davy ever saw these falls?' he said to himself; 'they never told _me_. They tell _me_ nothing. But I will find out things for myself.'

The fisherman was rising from his stone when William again drew near. He had his rod and basket in hand prepared to go.

'Well, what do you think of the falls?'

'Oh, 'deed, and they was wonderful--and terrible. I was thinking how soon they would drown a man.'

'Yes, or a boy either. Which way are you going?'

'By the riverside, through the wood as far as the ford.'

'That will not be safe at this hour. You might slip into the stream. You had best go back the way you came.'

'I--I dare not,' stammered William.

'Dare not? Yet you are not afraid to go through these pathless woods by the riverside at dusk, though a false step might be fatal. Come along with me; I'll see you on a safe road.'

William followed through the ascending wood cautiously as before, ready to brave anything with such a companion.

The sun had not set when they stood upon the heath above, and then the stranger inquired--

'Well, my boy, of what are you afraid?'

'Of going past the Druids' stones, sir.'

'So you are superst.i.tious? What harm can a few old stones do to a stout boy like you?' was asked with a broad smile.

William felt half-ashamed of the confession, how he had been lost when quite little, and had seen the stones make faces at him, adding the current stories he had heard, and his fright that afternoon.

By this time they were descending a slope from the barren heath to the Merthyr Tydvil highway, thus avoiding close proximity to the dreaded circle, although the roadway pa.s.sed on a lower level. As they went, the stranger did his best to disabuse the boy's mind of his foolish terrors, and gave him to understand that long before there were any Christian churches in the land, or any Christian clergymen, the Druids were the priests, the priests of Baal, and set up those stones for their temples.

Yet he said nothing of their horrid rites or human sacrifices, lest he should confirm the boy's dread of the stones.

William listened with wide-open ears, putting in a question here and there, as was his wont, and, to his delight, receiving intelligent replies adapted to the capacity of a thinking child. He was very anxious to know something more about the priests of Baal, but, after a brief identification of them with the idolatrous worshippers of the sun, the stranger, having ascertained that he could read, referred him to the Bible for further information.

They had reached the well-trodden turning to the ford. The sun had by this time set, and twilight was closing in.

'I presume our ways part here,' observed the tall stranger. 'Good-bye.

Do not forget what I have told you. Brave boys who fear G.o.d, and do their duty to their fellows, do not dread the aspect of a few grey old stones.'