If she had followed, she might have tracked him to his old storehouse of knowledge, Caerphilly Castle, and far down a crumbling flight of stone steps to a curious vault below the level of the moat, and, beneath that marvel of marvels, the reft, overhanging tower.
He had gathered, by inquiry from the vicar and others, that here had anciently been a furnace for the smelting of metals for coinage and other purposes; and that it was supposed to have been employed, during a siege, for melting lead to pour from the battlements upon the besiegers; and, further, that either the besiegers or some traitor within contrived to let in a jet of water from the moat upon the molten metal, causing the terrific explosion which rent the tower from top to bottom, and left the strongly-built half hanging eleven feet out of the perpendicular, as a testimony to future ages.
But it was not of battles or sieges William was thinking, unless it might be his own conflict with a difficulty. He was there to examine the ancient furnace, with no one to talk or interrupt, and to found his own theories thereupon.
In a very short time Mr. Morris had his answer.
'Yes, sir, I think I can undertake your work.'
It was a bold undertaking for a farmer's son, self-taught, and only twenty years of age.
FOOTNOTE:
[13] An oval wicker boat covered with hide, with only a single seat, as used by the ancient Britons, and by the Welsh far into the present century.