“Poor, dear old Gwen! you wanted to see mother and me. I am sorry you were so lonely.”
“Well, my maid, it wasn’t that; I’m none so selfish. No, Gwladys, it wasn’t for myself I was praying, nor about myself I felt so happy. No, ’twas about little David. Gwladys, I mean to take little David to the eye-well.”
“Oh! dear me, Gwen, what is that?”
“Hush, hush, child! don’t speak of it lightly; just sit patient for five minutes, my dear, and you shall know the whole ins and outs of it.”
I have said that Gwen, though a very religious woman, was, if possible, a more superstitious one. From the fountain-head of her knowledge and wisdom I had drunk deeply; of late, when away from her, I had been deprived of these goodly draughts, but I was all the more ready now to partake of the very delicious one she had ready dished up for my benefit.
“Go on,” I said, in a tone of intense interest.
“I mean to take the child to the eye-well,” continued Gwen; “there’s one within a mile or two of this place that’s famed, and justly, through the whole country. Many’s the blind person, or the weak-eyed body, that has been cured by it; and many and many thoughts have I cast toward it, Gwladys; not liking to speak, for sure, if you long too earnestly, you hinders, so’s the belief, the cure. Now there’s wells that have a ‘perhaps’ to ’em, and there’s wells that have a ‘certainty,’ and of all the wells that ever was sure, this is the one. And I’ve a strong belief and faith in my mind, that though I brought the little lad here blind, I may carry him home seeing.”
True, oh! Gwen, dear Gwen, not in your way, perhaps in a better!
As she spoke, attracted by the sound of her voice, the child toddled to his feet, came to her side, and raised his dark, sightless eyes to her face.
“But it must be managed clever,” continued Gwen, “and ’tis there I want you to help me. I don’t want my mistress, nor a soul in the house but yourself to know, until I can bring in the laddie with the daylight let into his blessed eyes; and to have any success we must obey the rules solemn. For three mornings we must be at the well before sunrise, and when the first sunbeam dips into the water, down must go the child’s head right under too, with it, and this we must do three days running, and then stop for three days, and then three days again. Ah! but I feel the Lord’ll give His blessing, and there’s real cure in the well.”