“Take good care of my horse! Rub him well down; feed him. I shall know if you don’t!” she cried, as she entered the passage and knocked gently at the door.
It was opened by Gunrig’s mother, whose swollen eyes and subdued voice told their own tale.
“May I come in and see him, mother?” said Branwen, in her own soft voice.
“You are a strange visitor,” said the poor woman, in some surprise. “Do you want much to see him? He is but a poor sight now.”
“Yes—O yes!—I want very much to see him.”
“Your voice is kindly, old woman. You may come in.”
The sight that Branwen saw on entering was, indeed, one fitted to arouse the most sorrowful emotions of the heart; for there, on a rude couch of branches, lay the mere shadow of the once stalwart chief, the great bones of his shoulders showing their form through the garments which he had declined to take off; while his sunken cheeks, large glittering eyes, and labouring breath, told all too plainly that disease had almost completed the ruin of the body, and that death was standing by to liberate the soul.
“Who comes to disturb me at such a time, mother?” said the dying man, with a distressed look.
Branwen did not give her time to answer, but, hurrying forward, knelt beside the couch and whispered in his ear. As she did so there was a sudden rush of blood to the wan cheeks, and something like a blaze of the wonted fire in the sunken eyes.
“Mother,” he said, with something of his old strength of voice, “leave us for a short while. This woman has somewhat to tell me.”