She put her arms round his neck and pulled him gently to her. He was content to lie there, with his head on her breast, while she talked in a low voice of that distant place and of her own childhood. He listened in a dream and did not speak at all until she began to tell him a long story which the Felindre shepherd, Morgan, had told her when she was a child. Then Edwin opened his eyes and stopped her.
“Dearest, I know that story,” he said. “Oh, go on, it’s wonderful. . . .”
“Perhaps I’ve told it to you before: perhaps I told you when you were a baby—I used to talk to you a great deal in your cradle. Perhaps . . . I was rather lonely when you came, Eddie.”
“Oh, no, I’m sure you haven’t. . . .”
“Look, the cloud is blotting out my mountain now,” she said. “It is time we were going.” The counties were asleep already.
Over the brow of the hill they stepped into a different world, for where the smoke of the black country had blotted the fading skyline a hundred pit fires were beginning to blink out, and nearer still a pillar of flame shot up into the sky.
“Oh, look, mother,” Edwin cried.
“They’re puddling the iron at the great Mawne furnaces. Stand still a moment, we might almost hear their roar.”
But no sound came to them but the clear tinkle of a stream plunging into its mossy cup, and this seemed to bring them back into touch with the lands that they had left. They hurried down through the dark woodland paths, and when they reached the little town lights had bloomed in all the ugly cottage windows, and the streets seemed deserted, for the children were indoors.