CHAPTER XVI
A SUMMONS
The days spent on the mountain had not been as cheerless as that first night. The fire burned now continually on the hearth, the light peat smoke was dissipated at once by the wind, which was never still at the fall of the year at the altitude where was planted the hovel of the hermit.
The supply of food was better than at first. One night Pabo had found a she-goat attached to a bush near the stone of Cynwyl; and he had taken her to his habitation, where she supplied him with milk. On another night he had found on a rock a rolled-up blanket, and had experienced the comfort at night of this additional covering.
But no tidings whatever had reached him of what went on in Caio. This was satisfactory, and his anxiety for his flock abated. But he knew that the enemy was quartered in the valley, because no call had come to him to return to it. At nights he would steal along the mountain-top that he might, from Bronffin, look down on the sleeping valley, with its scattered farms and hamlets; and on Sunday morning he even ventured within hearing of the church bell, that he might in spirit unite with his flock in prayer. He concluded that one of the assistant priests from a chapelry under the great Church was ministering there in his stead. He knew that his people would be thinking of him, as he was of them.
During the day he made long excursions to the north, among the wild wastes that stretched interminably away before his eyes, and offered him a region where he might lie hid should his present hiding-place be discovered.
None could approach the hut unobserved, a long stretch of moor was commanded by it, and the rocks in the rear afforded means, should he observe an enemy approach, of getting away beyond their reach into the intricacies of the wilderness.
At first Pabo was oppressed by the sense of loneliness. No human face was seen, no human voice heard. But this passed, and he became conscious of a calm coming over his troubled heart, and with it a sense of freedom from care and childlike happiness.
The elevation at which he lived, the elasticity of the air, the brilliance of the light, unobstructed, as below, by mountains, tended towards this. Moreover, he was alone with Nature, that has an inspiriting effect on the heart, whilst at the same time tranquilizing the nerves—tranquilizing all the cares and worries bred of life among men. It was a delight to Pabo to wander through the heather to some brow that overhung the Ystrad Towy or the valley of the Cothi, and look down from his treeless altitude on the rolling masses of wood, now undergoing glorious change of color under the touch of autumn. Or else to venture into the higher, unoccupied mountain glens, where the rowan and the rose-bramble were scarlet with their berries, and there he seemed to be moving in the land of coral.