“You speak as if you like the country, Enrico?”
“And so I do,” replied Hughes, warmly. “I was born among its fine old mountains, and I love its old-fashioned, brave, honest-hearted race; but to continue. Days had passed when some fishermen at sea noticed a spiral wreath of smoke issuing from the face of the lesser Orme.
“They talked of this over the fire at night. Some laughed at the tale, but others of the older men remembered to have heard of a cave in the flanks of the mountain, long the abode of the foxes.
“They searched, and found a narrow, dangerous path, which yet exists. The Gloddaeth keepers know it, and know too where to track Reynard when their game disappears. The priest was found half starved, and fast asleep there.
“The news spread, the fanatic population was soon roused. The country people flocked from far and near.
“‘Let the idolater see his chapel,’ they roared, as the emaciated, careworn man was dragged into the centre of the green field, stretching before the house of Penrhyn to the sea. The aged priest was weak with hunger, and worn with suffering. Before him seethed a rude mob of infuriated peasants, and death was certain. This moved him not, but the chapel, despoiled, ruined, and half burned, caused the tears to roll down his thin cheeks.
“‘Ha!’ shouted a thick-set peasant, ‘ye doomed us all to death, let us see how ye meet your own;’ and he hurled a sharp stone at the feeble old man.
“‘I condemned ye not, children of darkness,’ said the priest, wiping away the blood from his eyes, and raising his tall, fine figure to its utmost height, his grey hair streaming on the wind. ‘I would have saved ye from the evil one, whose prey ye are. Ye cannot harm me,’ and a smile of withering scorn settled down upon his lips.
“From the skirts of the crowd to its centre, the whole became one seething, boiling mass. Knives gleamed in the sunshine. One moment Father Guy stood there, firm and erect, a smile of quiet scorn on his lips, and the fresh, breeze from the sea playing through his scanty grey hair and over his shaven crown; the next his body was whirling above men’s heads, it was pulled to and fro, torn here and there, until at length it was rived, piecemeal, by the infuriated crowd, and the Roman Catholic faith died out with the House of Penrhyn in Creuddyn.”
The tale was told, the speaker ceased, and for a moment all was silence, for the story had been a melancholy one.