'I do not be knowing what to think, Rhys!'—''Deed, Rhys, Evan has served us well, and Mr. Pryse is a bad man, your father said it.'—'Yes, indeed, it is a serious loss, but Evan helped us to get the money.'—'Yes, yes, Rhys, I do be aware you have worked hard too; but Evan, he did teach us new ways—and—after all,' she concluded, rising slowly to replace the depleted stocking in the coffer, 'we may thank God we had the money saved, or our farm would have gone from us, and we should have lost everything. Think of poor Ales, and don't be letting her hear you.'
Poor Ales! William had found her in the dairy, bent down over the tall churn, with her head on her bare brown arms, sobbing as if her heart would break, less for herself than the aspersion cast on her true and faithful Evan. She had shrunk away, not from Mr. Pryse's whip, but from an evil tongue and a threat that cut worse than a whip-lash.
Prisons were horrible dens before John Howard spent his life in dragging their iniquities to light, and purifying their foulness. 'Jail' was a word to daunt the strongest, for everywhere tales were rife how unscrupulous power thrust innocent men within their pestilential walls to perish, for no crime greater than debt or unguarded words.
William comforted in vain.
'Jail, Willem! He said he would send me to jail, only for standing up for honest people. But he is a rogue, Willem—a bad, wicked rogue, Willem.' She sobbed and shuddered as she gasped out the words. 'Yes, 'deed! it will be that cruel Mr. Pryse that do be robbing the widow of her money—and—and my poor Evan of his good name. Yes, sure, and me of my dear husband that would have been this day! Oh, Willem fach, my poor heart will be breaking.'
'Hush, Ales dear! don't say so,' implored the sympathetic boy, laying his hand tenderly upon her shoulder. 'Unkind words are hard to bear, I know'—and he sighed—'but nobody here will think Evan took our money and yours, and ran away from you.' (He might have altered his opinion could he have heard through the stone wall what Rhys was saying.) 'Cheer up; it will all come right when Evan gets back; yes, sure.'
Ales startled William with the quick, energetic way she flung up her head and spoke—
'Come back? He will not come back unless I can seek out what that wicked wretch has done with him. Would he be so sure of it, or dare to come here to rob your mother—yes, to rob her—if he did not know what he had done to keep my Evan from me? He may have put him in jail to rot there. Oh!' (and she wrung her hands, brown and hard with honest toil)—'oh! or he may have had him murdered. He is bad enough for that!'
'Hush, hush, Ales! Mr. Pryse would hardly do that; though he is a bad man, and looked, oh, so wickedly pleased when he knocked down the Tower of Babel I was building. I'm afraid, Ales dear, he would not stick at much,' William added, after a moment's cogitation.
'Name o' goodness, boy! He would stick at nothing whatever!' she cried, rising to her feet, and taking her cloak from a peg in the storeroom outside the dairy. 'But I am off to Cardiff to find Evan, or search out the truth; and do you pray for me, Willem, that I may succeed, and that no harm may come to me before I do.'