BLINDED BY PASSION, HE SPURRED HIS HORSE TO THE UNCERTAIN
FORD.—See page 271.
His follower heard a shriek, but reached the river's brink only in time to see a swirling mass of something far down the rain-filled river.
Mr. Pryse had gone to meet the Cambria's boat in other fashion than he contemplated.
His spurs entangled in the stirrups, his pockets and saddle-bags weighted with ill-gotten coin, horse and man had gone together.
A Welshman in a coracle[13] called out to the ferryman at Taff's Well Ferry, and he to the Cambria's men rowing up-stream, and amongst them they got a panting, struggling, half-dead horse ashore, to find what had been Mr. Pryse underneath, clutching at the turned saddle and bags with the grip that never relaxes—the grip of death.
Cover him over. Let the Preventive-service men, chasing the other boat, fight with pistol and cutlass for the possession of the dead, his gold, and his incriminating papers, whilst the smart Preventive cutter in the bay boards the short-handed Cambria, and tows her confiscated prize into port, the dead man's strong box included. Little recks the drowned man what becomes of his hoard. He has gone to his final reckoning with a Lord he had forgotten, a Lord no man can cheat or deceive.
Intelligence of his retributive death comes to the rejoicing family at the farm with a sobering shock, but nobody affects to lament. And all over his lordship's wide domain, oppressed men breathe freer for this one man's death.
'Man deliberates, but God delivers,' is said with bated breath by more than sententious Ales, whilst Mrs. Edwards insists that his death is a judgment for his strictures on her lost husband.