"Oh, anwl!" she said, as she entered the kitchen, "there's a happy time it will be for us all. Oh! mustn't we bustle about and get everything nice for them. I must rub up the furniture in the best bedroom and get the silver teapot out and the silver spoons!"
"Yes," said her father, rubbing his knees, "'twill be a grand time indeed! When will they come, I wonder? Perhaps we have not quite lost Will after all."
"Twt, twt, no," said Morva; "didn't mother always say that they would come back to you?"
"Yes, indeed—do you think she meant Gethin too?"
"I think she meant him too," said Morva, blushing.
"When will the gorse and the heather be in full bloom, I wonder? Caton pawb! I have never noticed it much," asked the old man.
"Oh! in another month," answered Morva, "'twill be gold and purple all over, with soft blue and brown shadows in the mornings, and in the evenings grey and copper in all the little hollows. Oh, 'tis beautiful! and I can show her where the plovers lay their eggs, and I will take her to listen for the curlew's note coming out of the mist like a spirit whistler, and I can take her down to the rocks by Ogo Wylofen, too, where the seals are making their home. But, indeed, Will knows it all as well as I do, and he will like to show them all to her himself, I think."
From that day light seemed to dawn upon the old man's soul; his step grew firmer, he stooped less in the shoulders, he looked less on the ground and more bravely on his fellow travellers on the road of life. He did not flinch from the consequences of his confession, but seemed to find some inward peace, which more than recompensed him for the discredit which he had brought upon himself. From this time forward a great change was observable in him, a change for which we can find no better name than conversion. It is an old-fashioned word, all but tabooed in modern polite society, but where will be found another which so well expresses the complete transformation in the life and character of a man who awakes from the sleep of selfish worldliness, to the better and higher principles of spiritual life? To every human being this awakening comes sooner or later. To some, gradually and naturally as the dawning of morning, and the bright effulgence of its rays is not recognised until the darkness and clouds have already rolled away, and, lo, it is day. Upon others it bursts with the suddenness of a thunderstorm, and the soul cowers under the threatening peals, and is riven by the lightning flashes of conscience before it reaches the haven of calm and peace. To some, alas, the awakening comes not at all, until through the open door of death the soul escapes from the veil of flesh which has hidden from it the true life.
"Is there a 'Sciet' next Sunday?" asked Ebben Owens, as they all sat at tea together one evening.
"No—not till the Sunday after," said Gwilym, reddening.