Education in those days was neither so cheap nor so general as it has become now, and boys like himself, and even the children of much more well-to-do farmers than was Eli Walters, had to content themselves with what schooling could be got in their native villages. Hereford Grammar School was chiefly attended by sons of professional men, and many of the neighbouring squires were satisfied to let their boys pick up all the learning they needed there. When Rhys, with his uncultivated country speech, made his appearance, many were inclined to despise him, holding aloof from him as from a being vastly inferior to themselves; and, when they found out, as they soon did, that his father was a common farmer who worked with his hands, some became actively aggressive and began, after the manner of boys, to practise small cruelties upon the new-comer.
But they had caught the wrong man, and it was not long before their mistake was brought home to them. Rhys, with all his faults, was no shivering milksop fresh from his mother’s apron-strings, but a hard and cautious young savage, with a heavier fist than most of his oppressors could boast of, and a cheerful willingness in using it freely.
So, though the bigger lads taught him the healthy lesson that there were higher powers than himself, his contemporaries soon decided that it was wiser to leave him alone. Besides, how was juvenile snobbishness to resist the attractions of one who could make such catapults and slings, knew things that only gipsies and poachers understood, and was familiar with phases of outdoor life which they had never so much as imagined? Though he made few friends during the six years he spent at school, he had many admirers, and as, little by little, his accent dropped from him and he adopted the manners of his associates, he began to be looked upon as something of a personage, and left school with a veneer of sophistication which hid from ordinary view the fact that he had no more changed in character than a man changes who accustoms himself to the perpetual wear of his Sunday clothes.
When he returned to Great Masterhouse and settled down to help his father on the farm, he was accepted by his kind as a much-travelled and very fine young man. On market-days in Llangarth, Eli was not a little proud of his tall son with his green tail-coat and superior air, and he smiled complacently to see how the young fellows nudged each other as he went down the street, and what admiring glances were cast after him by the farmers’ daughters. Among the latter he produced the same effect as an eligible duke might in a community of society young ladies. Poor old Eli, lying on his death-bed a few years later, told himself that it would not be his fault should Rhys be unsuccessful in life.
* * * * * *
Rhys Walters rode along the plateau until he passed the Boiling Wells. There he turned again eastwards, going down an old grass-grown watercourse, the bed of which had become something like a path. The mist was not so thick, and a light showed through it a short way in front, like a little staring eye with long shining eyelashes piercing the damp. As he neared the house from which it proceeded, a door opened, letting a luminous stream into the fog, and a head peered out.
“Be that Mr. Walters?” said a voice.
“Here I am,” replied Rhys, slipping from his horse.
The man came out and led the animal away to the back of the house, and Rhys entered, wiping the damp from his hair.