afterwards, they went slowly along the road up the valley to Glwysva. Then the basket was on Tom's left arm, and his right round the form that was the world itself to him. And at Gwennie's throat showed a ribbon that had its fellow at Tom's knee.

CHAPTER V.

66 ' RAVENS OF ARAN; WITNESS."

MEANWHILE what of Will Addis ?

When he first fled, it was along the lane towards his own house. Dully, and with a savage ferocity of hate gnawing at his heart, he stumbled on till he reached a point half way along his path. Here an oak, blasted and riven by lightning, rose upon one side of the road. All its top was gone, and all its branches also save one; splintered and wrecked by the destroying stroke. The one bough remained stretched, gaunt and bare, across the path, where its end also was broken off. Some foot or more from the end, however, a slender and leafless branch dangled by a strip of bark. The sight of this tree, so like to a gallows, arrested the eye of the man beneath, and he paused. What if he had killed his rival? Fear clutched at the springs of his heart, and turned the living blood in him to crawling, clammy slime. The lava flood in his brain, that had dashed its waves so fiercely against his temples as if to burst through, died stilly, slowly down to frozen lead. He put his hands out and caught the top bar of a gate beside him. Laying the new weight of his forehead between his hands upon the wood, he strove to think.

What if he had killed his rival? That would be murder, and murder meant hanging. Swift despair bred sudden defiance. He raised his head and stood upright again. What of it? If Tom Hawys were dead, he couldn't marry Gwennie. True enough; but some other man might; and she would be elated to know that he,-Will Addis, -was hung.

Anything rather than that; she must not live to triumph over him from the witness box. The last thought decided him; he would go back and finish her, too.

He did not use the lane in returning, but, passing through the gate under his hand, stole across the fields until he reached the hedge, which now alone divided him from the scene of the encounter. Peering cautiously through, a sight met his view that caused him to stagger back and smite his temples with clenched fists.

Standing in the road, locked in a fond embrace, and utterly oblivious to all outside influences, were the two lovers, the man whispering the fond

foolishnesses of the position, and the maiden sighing her utter happiness in answer.

Backward, backward went the Uchelwr, staggering like a drunken man, the blaze of his rage blinding him; bitter hatred and fierce hunger for vengeance making a tossing hell of his bosom.

His brain was seething, humming and drumming with devilish thoughts that would not be still long enough to piece themselves in sequence. Once more he reached the gate, and, stumbling through, fell, utterly exhausted, face downward, in the grass.

Thence, not lifting his face or moving a limb, he poured out an hour long train of curses, curses that halted for a choice of blasphemous superlatives, or paused for a more diabolical image. But through it all, until he was almost finished, he never mentioned the lovers by name. stopped suddenly, and lay a short while quiescent. The thoughts were shaping themselves at last, coming under control.

Then he

Raising his face, and propping it with his chin on the sod, he glanced darkly round to make certain he was alone. Assured of this, he rose to his knees, and turned his frienzied features to the west, where the peaks of Aran glowed or darkled against the sinking sun. A fearful shape he looked, kneeling there, bareheaded, the black hair all in a bloody tangle matted over his brows and down his livid cheeks, whence the bloodshot eyes, with their red black balls, gleamed in Satanic fury.

Next, slowly, with wide stretched eyes and reached out, clenching fists, in a voice shrill with intensest concentration of ferocity, he proceeded to register an oath against the two objects of his hate.

"Ravens of Aran, hear me ! Birds that from your pinnacles stretch wide your wings and draw the black night across, hear me! Here, kneeling, as man should to God only, I swear to you that, sleeping or waking, dreaming or doing, night or day, I will not cease from working till I have utterly and completely revenged the doings of this day. Ravens of Aran, witness!"

Through every word of the vow every fibre of the man had vibrated to the snapping point, and now, when it was ended, the terrible strain relaxing, he collapsed, falling forward upon his face again.

Lying there, absolutely silent in the long grass, he showed vividly like to a corpse. Far off in the west a dark speck became visible against the light. Nearer and nearer it came, keeping between the lines of Drumhir and its northern parallel of Cefn Du, looming larger and larger, till it took the black semblance of a raven. Heavily it flapped on

till it reached the mouth of the valley. There slowly it began to circle, slower still and lower, till the figure in the grass attracted it. Just for a moment it hovered, and then, with outstretched wings, descended, lighting upon the broken bough above the dangling branch just as the last red gleam of the departing sun painted tree and bird alike with 8 stain that nailed the horrible suggestiveness of the picture.

Chap! chap! rasp! rasp!" the bird was whetting its beak. “Croak!" it was challenging the thing beneath.

With startling suddenness the man leaped upright. "What was that?" Wildly he gazed around, till the ghastly shape on the withered limb met his view. Staggering back, he clutched

THE

71

at the gate for support, while one hand covered his eyes to shut them from the horror above.

When at length he dropped his hand and looked again, the raven was gone, vanished into the gathering gloom of Drumhir, taking with it the red tint from the tree and leaving him alone in the shadows.

He shivered as if with ague, pushing back the damp locks from his brow. Looking round, the scintillating outline of Aran in the west caught his eye, and again he shivered. What did it mean? He could not tell; he would go home and rest awhile. Picking up the hat at his feet, he started stiffly along the lane, making his way towards the lights now palely beginning to shine from the windows of Mynachty.

HERE has been an excellent competition for the first County Schools prize. It is with the greatest difficulty that I have been able to pick out the best set from the first four,-I had to be very critical indeed. The following is the list of the best competitors, as finally decided upon, in order of merit,

1. Mary Alma Foulkes, Carnarvon County School. 2. Bessie Richards, Carnarvon County School. 3. Elsie Jones, Barmouth County School. 4. Claudia Morgan, Machynlleth County School. 5. Maggie Roberts, Barmouth County School. 6. Enid.

7. Christopher J. Jones, Newtown County School. 8. R. O. Griffith, Pwllheli County School. 9. Catherine Rowlands, Barmouth County School. 10. Myfanwy Rees, Barmouth County School. 11. Aled Gwynedd Ab Owen, Carnarvon. 12. Arthur.

The first prize will be sent to Miss Foulkes, of the Carnarvon County School, and I shall do my best to show my appreciation of the excellent work done by the other nine competitors in the above list.

The next prize will be given for the best summary of Scott's Ivanhoe in English or of Daniel Owen's Rhys Lewis in Welsh. The summary must not take more than a full page of WALES. The compositions are to be sent to O. M. Edwards, Lincoln College, Oxford, before the first day of May. The competition is open to all schools in Wales.

The following are the prize translations.

Miss Richards' rendering of Renan's famous introduction is better, and will be printed in Cymru'r Plant.

I.-HEDDWCH I TI, MARC.

Ruskin.

Da y gall Fenis alw arnom i sylwi, gyda pharch, nad oes o'r holl dyrau sydd eto i'w gweled yn codi o'i hynysoedd, fel coedwig heb ganghennau, ond un tŵr yn unig yr hwn oedd a'i bwrpas yn rhywbeth heblaw galw i weddi, a'r un tŵr hwnnw nid oedd ond tŵr gwylio. Tra y dyrchafai palasau dinasoedd ereill Itali mewn cadernid sarrug o amgaerau, a'u hymylau yn ganllawiau bylchog i ollwng picell a saeth, ni suddodd tywod Fenis erioed, o'r dechreu i'r diwedd, dan bwysau tŵr rhyfel, ac addurnid ei nen-rodfeydd hi gan blethwaith cerfiedig o ddyfais Arabaidd, ac aur-beli yn crogi wrth ddail y lili.

Renan.

II. RECOLLECTIONS OF CHILDHOOD. One of the most common legends in Brittany is that of the fabulous town of Is, which at some We unknown time was swallowed up by the sea. are shown, at different parts of the sea coast, the site of this fabulous city, and fishermen tell you some strange stories about it. On stormy days, they assure you that they see, in the hollows of the waves, the tops of the steeples of some churches; on calm days we hear rising from the depths the sounds of bells modulating the day's hymn. It has often seemed to me that I have, deep down in my heart, a town of Is, whose bells are always ringing to call together to their devotions the believers who no longer hear. Sometimes I pause to listen to these faint vibrations, which seem to come up from the profound depths, like sounds from another world. As old age is drawing near me, I take pleasure during my summer rest to collect together these distant sounds of an Atlantis that has disappeared.

III. A PIECE OF WRITING.
Robert Oliver Rees.

It is the pledge of Ieuan Gwynedd. Here, at least, is one temperance pledge that never came to shame. After signing it, the young abstainer laid down his pen, never again to touch the cup. This was the dawn of a day that remained bright, without the shadow of one cloud on it till the

setting of sun,-the start on a straight road from which there never was straying nor bending one step out of it, nor falling once upon it, to the end of the journey. Here is one unshaken covenant, between an earnest young soul on earth and God in heaven, that never was broken. The whole life of the boy who wrote this pledge, was but a fair, living copy of it. Yes, he lies to-day in the churchyard of Groes Wen, with his character on earth as an abstainer as blameless as his soul in heaven above.

The article in my last number on the Aberystwyth Local Governing Body has involved me in much correspondence. Mr. John Evans, who is after all my good friend of the old days,-subjects his case to me at great length, and in the most beautiful Welsh. It is true that a condensed report does not do an orator justice, and I quite believe Mr. Evans when he says that it was sympathy for the overworked boy that made him eloquent. But I still wonder why so wise a man spoke as he did, and why he is unwilling to confess that he has been at fault.

After Mr. Evans' sensible letter came another, written by a "Saxon who has lived many years in Wales." The "Saxon" flourishes his barbaric axe over Mr.

Richards' head, and asks, before utterly demolishing him, who he is.

He

Mr. Richards, who is reported to have pleaded that English can best be learnt by means of Welsh, is a tenant farmer. knows something about education, though. He was a bright boy at the Aberystwyth Grammar School, he was the best liked of all Llandovery boys, he carried the school exhibition to Oxford, he won a mathematical scholarship at Oxford, and he graduated having taken honours in Mathematical Moderations and Greats. He was taught Welsh every day at Llandovery; for he was there before Bishop Edwards set the will of the founder of the school at defiance.

The ruthless "Saxon is one of those people who will not see that progress is being made. Education is not now where it was ten years ago; English is not now taught in our schools in the brutal and unsuccessful way in which it was taught when some of us were school-boys. The "Saxon who has lived many years reminds me of Mark Pattison, as he was described by an undergraduate poet, trying to keep pace in chapel with the new chaplain. That chaplain went so fast that, if in the Creed, the new chaplain would get you gave any other up to Pontius Pilate to the end first. Mark Pattison's deep rancous voice was heard among the voices of undergraduates,—

I am told by one who has examined the county schools of many, if not of most, of the shires of Wales, that the best English is invariably found where it is taught through the medium of Welsh.

It is cruel, as well as unjust, to taunt us with a desire to keep Welshmen in their so-called isolation. We advocate the use of Welsh, not because we wish to keep English at bay, but because English is more speedily and more correctly learnt by means of Welsh than by means of nothing. Our ideal is a bilingual Wales, a people who are heirs to the literature and thought of Wales, and who have also entered into possession of a wider sphere. We aim at the production of the best citizens, not at the production of human apes and human parrots.

be given of the life and education of boys In the next numbers, descriptions will in France and Germany. and girls in continental schools,-especially