He had some few books with him, but he scarcely read, save in one, the Bible. Plenty of money the stranger was provided with, for he paid his expenses handsomely, and gave often freely to those few poor who came in his way; but yet his very name remained a mystery, if that could be called mystery, which none cared to inquire or ascertain; and when the first warm beams of springtide sun melted the snow upon the mountain-tops, as suddenly as he came, so he departed, none knew or asked whither.
But he did not, as it seems, go far. In a small Welsh town, not twenty miles distant, a few days after, and that stranger, who it seemed had, uninjured, so roughly exposed himself to the fatigues and inclemency of the wintry weather during his sojourn in his late retreat, lay dangerously ill in a comfortable little inn belonging to the place; unknown here also, but tended with all the disinterested care and kindness which seldom fails to cheer the stranger in that mountain land. Skilful medical attendance was happily provided; and the fever, against whose advances the sufferer, with a peculiarly nervous dread, seemed to battle—by proper means was subdued, and the sick man partially recovered.
As he lay upon his bed one of the first mornings after his convalescence, a merry peal from the bells of the neighbouring church burst upon his ear. Merrier and merrier they continued to ring, and the invalid turned sadly and wearily round upon his pillow, as if he would fain have escaped from sounds of joy, harmonizing so little with his lonely heart.
"Truly there is a joy with which the stranger intermeddleth not."
But still those sounds, as if in very mockery and despite, continued to clash forth at intervals during the day, caring little for the sick hearts and wounded spirits upon which that merriment might chance to jar.
"You are very gay," the stranger said with a melancholy smile to his landlady, when she came to attend him that day; and the remark was answered by the ready information, that the bells were this day ringing on occasion of a marriage which that morning had taken place in the neighbourhood, the bride being a young lady of a family of long standing in these parts. The gentleman, a widower and a Scotchman, &c. But all this her listener heeded not.
"Bells thou soundest merrily
When the bridal party
To the church doth hie;
Bells thou soundest solemnly,
When on Sabbath mornings,
Fields deserted lie."
It was Sunday morning, and all the people of the place were flocking to the Welsh service of the church; but the English stranger mingled not with these. No—rather as he had turned wearily away from the mad music of the marriage-bell, did his languid footsteps turn aside, when now in more solemn cadence it sounded in his ear.
Not as yet was his soul attuned to enter that house of God, and offer up prayers and praises with a thankful heart. To that lonely man, it would have been indeed requiring a song, a melody, in his heaviness—to "sing the Lord's song in a strange land."