He was--" "Cardo!" said his father severely, "when I want any information on the subject I will ask for it; I want you to set Dye and Ebben on to the draining of that field to-morrow--" "Parc y waun ?" "Yes; Parc y waun." "Right, father," said Cardo good-naturedly.

He was devotedly attached to his father, and credited him with a depth of affection and tenderness lying hidden behind his stern manner--a sentiment which must have been revealed to him by intuition, for he had never seen any outward sign of it.

"It's no use," he muttered, as his father rose and left the room; "it's no use trying to broach the subject to him, poor fellow! I must be more careful, and keep my thoughts to myself." Later on in the evening, Valmai sat in the hot, crowded chapel, her elbows pressed tightly in to her sides by the two fat women between whom she sat, their broad-brimmed hats much impeding her view of the preacher, who was pounding the red velvet cushion in the old pulpit, between two dim mould candles which shed a faint light over his face.
Valmai listened with folded hands as he spoke of the narrow way so difficult to tread, so wearisome to follow--of the few who walked in it and the people, listening with upturned faces and bated breath, answered to his appeal with sighs and groans and "amens." He then passed on to a still more vivid description of the broad road, so smooth, so easy, so charming to every sense, so thronged with people all gaily dancing onwards to destruction, the sudden end of the road, where it launched its thronging crowds over a precipice into the foaming, seething sea of everlasting woe and misery.
Valmai looked round her with awe and horror.
"Did these innocent-looking, simple people belong to that thronging crowd who were hurrying on to their own destruction?
was she herself one of them?
Cardo ?--her uncle ?" The thought was dreadful, her breath came and went quickly, her eyes were full of tears, and she felt as if she must rise suddenly and rush into the open air, but as she looked round the chapel she caught sight through one of the windows of the dark blue sky of night, bespangled with stars, and a glow of purer and healthier feeling came over her.
She would not believe it--outside was the fresh night wind, outside was the silver moonlight, and in the words of the poet of whom she had never heard she said within herself, "No! God is in Heaven, it's all right with the world!" Her joyous nature could not brook the saddening influences of the Methodist creed, and as she passed out into the clear night air amongst the crowd of listeners, and heard their mournful sighs and their evident appreciation of the sermon, or rather sermons, for there had been two, her heart bounded with a sense of relief; joy and happiness were its natural elements, and she returned to them as an innocent child rushes to its mother's arms.
Leaving the thronged road, she took the rugged path down the hillside, alone under the stars, and remembering Cardo's question, "Will you come home by the shore ?" she wondered whether he was anywhere near! As she reached the bottom of the cliff and trod on the firm, hard sand below, she saw him standing in the shadow of a rock, and gazing out at the sea over which the moon made a pathway of silver.
The fishing boats from Ynysoer were out like moths upon the water.
They glided from the darkness across that path of light and away again into the unknown.

On one a light was burning.
"That is the _Butterfly_," thought Valmai, "I am beginning to know them all; and there is Cardo Wynne!" and with a spirit of mischief gleaming in her eyes and dimpling her face, she approached him quietly, her light footstep making no sound on the sand.
She was close behind him and he had not turned round, but still stood with folded arms looking out over the moonlit scene.

Having reached this point, Valmai's fun suddenly deserted her.