In a state of mind which was almost hypnotic Joseph was helped into the carriage. Three of the people who had come to meet him entered also, and they started up along the white mountain-road. Joseph felt that this progress was all too slow. He was going to a definite goal; he had come this vast distance to meet some one, and he was impatient of delay.
He looked up. High above his head the great slate mountain towered into the sky, a white cap of cloud hid the summit.
The prospect was august, and it thrilled him strangely. In that great cloud—like the cloud upon Sinai—what might lie hid? He was conscious of strange unseen forces, whose depths, measures, or intensity he could not understand, round him and controlling him. His life was utterly changed. The hard wall of materialism against which he had leant his sick life for support was melting and dissolving.
He gazed upwards once more at the great mountain.
Lluellyn Lys, the mysterious Teacher, was there! Who and what was this man of the mountains, this teacher who was so revered? Mary's brother, the brother of the beautiful girl who had saved him and sent him to these wild solitudes of Wales.
Mary's brother, yes; but what besides? And what was Lluellyn Lys to be to him?
They came to a point at which the road ended and died away into a mere grass track.
The old man who sat by Joseph's side rose from his seat and left the carriage.
"Master," he said, and, as he said it, Joseph bowed his head and could not look at him. "Master, here the road ends, and we must take you up the mountain-side to the Teacher by a steep path."