“Knock again, Thomas Edwards. Stop, let me knock,” said one of our party impatiently. “There, waddow, waddow, waddow!”
Suiting the action to the word, he thumped with a big stone heavily, till a middle-aged woman, with rough black hair, looked out of a window and screamed in Welsh to ask what this terrible noise was. To this they made answer in the same language, pointing to their sad burden, and asking permission to leave it for the doctor’s inspection and the inquest, if there was to be one. And I told them to add that I would pay well—anything, whatever she might like to ask. But she screamed out something that sounded like a curse, and closed the lattice violently. Knowing that many superstitions lingered in these mountains—as, indeed, they do elsewhere plentifully—I was not surprised at the woman’s stern refusal to admit us, especially at this time of pest; but I thought it strange that her fierce black eyes avoided both me and the poor rude litter on which the body of George lay, covered with some slate-workers’ aprons.
“She is not the mistress!” cried Evan Peters, in great excitement, as I thought. “Ask where is Hopkin—Black Hopkin—where is he?”
At this suggestion a general outcry arose in Welsh for “Black Hopkin”; an outcry so loud and prolonged that the woman opened the window again and screamed—as they told me afterward—“He is not at home, you noisy fools; he is gone to Machynlleth. Not long would you dare to make this noise if Hopkin ap Howel was at home.”
But while she was speaking the wicket-door of the great arched gate was thrown open, and a gun about six feet long and of very large bore was presented at us. The quarrymen drew aside briskly, and I was about to move somewhat hastily, when the great, swarthy man who was holding the gun withdrew it, and lifted his hat to me, proudly and as an equal.
“You cannot enter this house,” he said in very good English, and by no means rudely. “I am sorry for it, but it cannot be. My little daughter is very ill, the last of seven. You must go elsewhere.”
With these words he bowed again to me, while his sad eyes seemed to pierce my soul; and then he quietly closed the wicket and fastened it with a heavy bolt, and I knew that we must indeed go further.
This was no easy thing to do; for our useless walk to “Crug y Dlwlith” (the Dewless Hills), as this farm was called, had taken us further at every step from the place we must strive for after all—the good little Aber-Aydyr. The gallant quarrymen were now growing both weary and uneasy; and in justice to them I must say that no temptation of money, nor even any appeal to their sympathies, but only a challenge of their patriotism held them to the sad duties owing from the living to the dead. But knowing how proud all Welshmen are of the fame of their race and country, happily I exclaimed at last, when fear was getting the mastery, “What will be said of this in England, this low cowardice of the Cymro?” Upon that they looked at one another and did their best right gallantly.
Now, I need not go into any further sad details of this most sad time, except to say that Dr. Jones, who came the next day from Dolgelly, made a brief examination by order of the coroner. Of course, he had too much sense to suppose that the case was one of cholera; but to my surprise he pronounced that death was the result of “asphyxia, caused by too long immersion in the water.” And knowing nothing of George Bowring’s activity, vigour, and cultivated power in the water, perhaps he was not to be blamed for dreaming that a little mountain stream could drown him. I, on the other hand, felt as sure that my dear friend was foully murdered as I did that I should meet him in heaven—if I lived well for the rest of my life, which I resolved at once to do—and there have the whole thing explained, and perhaps be permitted to glance at the man who did it, as Lazarus did at Dives.
In spite of the doctor’s evidence and the coroner’s own persuasion, the jury found that “George Bowring died of the Caroline Morgan”—which the clerk corrected to cholera morbus—“brought on by wetting his feet and eating too many fish of his own catching.” And so you may see it entered now in the records of the court of the coroners of the king for Merioneth.