"My own fless and blood!" he sobbed. "To turn from his parents, that fed him, and clothed him, and sent him to the Coll-idge, and gave him allowance of twen-ty-six pounds a quarter, and bring him up in the fear of God! Oh, oh!—John Pritchard, give me a drink of water if you please.—And to call his father and mother sinful pip-ple! Indeed, Hugh Morgan, you are happy you have no children! They know bet-ter than you always; indeed the 'orld go on at a great rate, we get so wise! And the Chap-els burdened with debt! There is half a dozen Chap-els for him to preach in, but he say the highways and the hedges is his Chap-pil!... Look you, he not even come home. I meet him in the street, I, his father; and I say to him, 'Eesaac Oliver,' I say, 'if you will not preach in the Chap-pils, then you preach in that field on the Sarn road; you get crowds of pip-ple; it is a big field, and will hold crowds of pip-ple.' But he turn away, indeed he turn his back on his own father!... Look you: If he preached in that field, they find their way to that field, look you, all those pip-ple—they learn the way to that field as well as they learn the way to the sta-tion—and the Chap-el buy it cheap—oh, oh!... By and by that field be worth ten bazaars—oh, oh!... Blodwen, if the gas is lighted upstairs I think I go to bed—the things that were good enough for his father and mother are not good enough for him—this is a heavy day——"
John Pritchard and Hugh Morgan helped him up the stairs to bed.
June, Minetta, and John Willie left the valley before Eesaac Oliver descended from the bandstand. As they walked along the now rather more crowded Promenade Minetta seemed to be in livelier spirits; she chattered with June; but John Willie was morose again. Again he was wondering what would have happened had Ynys not chanced to pick a flower at the moment when his hand had moved imperceptibly towards hers. He saw her again, bending over the stick-heap and looking up as she gave him that expressionless "Nos da." By this time she was probably asleep, asleep far away up that Glyn, with the deep plunge of the fall for her lullaby, the stars for her night-lights, and the sun over the wood-edge for her alarum in the morning. Before the noises of Llanyglo should awaken him, she would be lying flat on the bank, taking trout for his breakfast.
And, again and ever again, he wondered whether, had that attempted touch of his not miscarried, she would have been off as the trout would have been off at the falling of her shadow on the water....
For one moment, just before he went to sleep, he seemed to hear Eesaac Oliver's voice again:
"Do not say, 'I will sin one more sin and then repent'—perhaps you will be taken away before that sin is committed——"
Then he slept, brokenly, waking at intervals to mutter "Damn it——" and to think of her again where she lay, far up Glyn Iago.