In the early morning hours before milking time at the farm, or in the grey of the twilight, Morva was free to work in her own garden, while Sara only tended her herb bed.

There at the further end was the potato bed in purple flower, here were rows of broad beans, in which the bees were humming, attracted by their sweet aroma that filled the evening air; there was the leek bed waving its grey green blades, and here, in the sunniest corner of all, was Sara's herb bed, which she tended with special care, whose products were gathered at stated times of the moon's age, not without serious thought and many consultations of an old herbal, brown with age, which always rested with her Bible and Williams "Pantycelyn's" hymns above the lintel of the door.

For nearly seventeen years this had been Morva's home, ever since the memorable night of wind and storm which had wrecked the good ship _Penelope_ on her voyage home from Australia.

She had reached Milford safely a week before, after a prosperous voyage, and having landed some of her passengers, was making her further way towards Liverpool, her final destination.

It was late autumn, and suddenly a storm arose which drove her out of her course, until on the Cardiganshire coast she had become a total wreck.