“He didn’t say when, only that he might be needin’ me all the day. So I may look out for him early—first thing in the mornin’.”
“That case ye must get to your bed at oncst, an’ ha’ a good sleep, so’s to start out fresh. First take this. It be the somethin’ I promised ye—better than tea.”
The something is a mug of mulled elderberry wine, which, whether or not better than tea, is certainty superior to port prepared in the same way.
Quaffing it down, and betaking himself to bed, under its somniferous influence, the Wye waterman is soon in the land of dreams. Not happy ones, alas! but visions of a river flood-swollen, with a boat upon its seething frothy surface, borne rapidly on towards a dangerous eddy—then into it—at length capsized to a sad symphony—the shrieks of a drowning woman!
Volume Three—Chapter Eight.
The New Mistress of the Mansion.
At Llangorren Court all is changed, from owner down to the humblest domestic. Lewin Murdock has become its master, as the priest told him he some day might.
There was none to say nay. By the failure of Ambrose Wynn’s heirs—in the line through his son and bearing his name—the estate of which he was the original testator reverts to the children of his daughter, of whom Lewin Murdock, an only son, is the sole survivor. He of Glyngog is therefore indisputable heritor of Llangorren; and no one disputing it, he is now in possession, having entered upon it soon as the legal formularies could be gone through with. This they have been with a haste which causes invidious remark, if not actual scandal.