THE inhabitants of the white mountain village of K- -, in Cardiganshire, were all retired to rest, it being ten o'clock. No-a single light twinkled from under eaves of thick and mossy thatch, in one cottage apart, and neater than the rest, that skirted the steep street, (as the salmon fishers, its chief inhabitants, were pleased to call it,) being, indeed, the rock, thinly covered with the soil, and fringed with long grass, but rudely smoothed, where very rugged, by art, for the transit of a gamboo (cart with small wheels of entire wood) or sledge. The moonlight slept in unbroken lustre on the houses of one story, or without any but what the roof slope formed, and several appearances marked it as a fisher village. A black, oval, pitched basket, as it appeared, hung against the wall of several of the cottages, being the coracle, or boat for one person, much used on the larger Welsh rivers, very primitive in form and construction, being precisely described by Cæsar in his account of the ancient Britons. Dried salmon and other fish also adorned others, pleasingly hinting of the general honesty and mutual confidence of the humble natives, poor as they were, for strangers were never thought of; the road, such as it was, merely mounting up to "the hill" (the lofty desert of sheepwalk) on one hand, and descending steeply to the river Tivy on the other. A deadened thunder, rising from some fall and brawling shallow 66 rapid" of the river, was the only sound, except the hooting of an owl from some old ivied building, a ruin apparently, visible on the olive-hued precipice behind. The russet mass of mountain, bulging, as it were, over the little range of cots, gave an air of security to their picturesque white beauty; while silver clouds curled and rolled in masses, grandly veiling their

higher peaks, and sometimes canopied the roofs, many reddened with wallflower; the walls also exhibiting streaks of green, where rains had drenched the vegetating thatch and washed down its tint of yellow green. Aged trees, green even to the trunks, luxuriant ivy enveloping them as well as the branches, stretched their huge arms down the declivity leading to the Tivy, the flashing of whose waters, through its rich fringe of underwood, caught the eye of any one standing on the ridge above. A solitary figure, tall and muffled, did stand with his back in contact with one of these oaks, so as to be hardly distinguishable from the trunk.

A poet might imagine, looking at a Welsh village by moonlight, thus embosomed in pastoral mountains, canopied with those silver mists whose very motion was peace, and lulled by those soft solemn sounds, more peacebreathing than even silence, that there, at least, care never came; there peace, "if to be found in the world," would be surely found; and soon that one light moving-that prettier painted door stealthily opening-would prove that peace confined to the clements only. "Here I am!" would be groaned to his mind's car by the ubiquitous, foul fiend, Care; for thence emerged a female form simplex munditiis-the exact description of it as to attire-rather tall than otherwise, but its chief characteristic, a drooping kind of bowed gait, in affecting unison with a melancholy settled over the pale features, so strongly as to be visible even by the moon at a very short distance. Brushing away a tear from each eye, as she held to her breast a little packet of some kind, as soon as she found (as she imagined) the coast clear, she proceeded, after fastening her door, toward one of the bowered footpathis

leading to the river. The concealed man looked after her, prepared to follow, when some belated salmon fisher, his dark coracle, strapped to his back, nodding over his head, appeared. This lurking personage was nicknamed "Lewis the Spy" by the country people. He was the agent, newly appointed, to inspect the condition of a once fine but most neglected estate, which had recently come into possession of a 66 Nabob," as they called him—a gentleman who had left Wales a boy, and was now on his voyage home to take possession of a dilapidated mansion called Talylynn. Lewis, his forerunner and plenipotentiary, was the dread and hate of the alarmed tenants. He had already ejected from his stewardship a good but rather indolent old man, John Bevan, who had grown old in the service of the former "squire;" and besides kept watch over the doings on the farms in an occult and treacherous manner, prowling round their "folds" by dusk, and often listening to conversations by concealing himself. Such was the man who now accosted the humble fisherman. Reverentially, as if to the terrible landlord himself, the peasant bared his head to his sullen representative.

"Who is that young woman?" he enquired, sternly, though well knowing who she was.

"Dim Saesneg," answered the man, bowing.

"None of your Dim Saesneg to me, fellow," rejoined Lewis, sternly. "Did not I hear you swearing in good English at a Saesyn (Englishman or Saxon) yesterday?"

The Welshman begged pardon in good Saxon, and answered at last

Why, then, if it please your honour, her name be Winifred-her other name be Bevan-Miss Bevan, the school-her father be Mister Bevan of Llaneol, steward that was to our old squire of the great house, the Hall-Talylynn Hall-where there's a fine lake. I warrant your honour has fished there. You Sae ̋sonig gentlemen do mostly do nothing but fish and shoot in our poor country; I beg pardon, but you look Saesoniadd, (Saxonlike,) I was thinking-fine lake, but the trout be not to compare

VOL. LVIII. NO. CCCLVII.

Oh, nothing more than that he's poor, sir-poor; and that we don't know much about the stranger

"What 'we' do you mean, while you talk of' we'?

"Lord bless ye, sir, why us all of this bankside, and this side Tivy, the great family of us, she's just like our little girl to us all; for don't she have all our young ones to give 'em learning, whether the Cardigan ladies pay for 'em or don't? And wasn't poor dear old John Bevan the man who would lend every farmer in the parish a help in money or any way, only for asking? So it is, you see, she has grown up among us. This young man, though he may be old for what I know, never seeing him in my life -you see, sir, we on this side of Tivy are like strangers to the Cardy men, t'other side-they are Cardie's, sure enow, true ones, as the Saxon foreign folk do call us all of this shire. I wouldn't trust one of 'em t'other side, no further than I could throw him. I'll tell ye a story

"Never mind. What about Da-, vid?"

"Oh, ho! You know his name, then? Well, and that's all I do pretty nigh. He lives with a woman who fostered him after his own mother died in travail with him, they do say, who has a little house, beyond that lump of a mountain, above all the others, we see by daylight; he has been in England, and is a strange one for music. He owes (owns, possesses,) a beautiful harp-beautiful! The Lord knows, some do say, that's all he owes in the world, so (except) his coracle and the salmon he takes, and what young people do give him at weddings and biddings, where he goes to play and what's that to keep a wife? Poor Davy Telynwr! Yet, by my soul, we all say we'd rather see her his than this foreigner gentleman's, who has almost broke her heart, they say, by coming between her and her own dear one."

"He's not come yet," muttered the other, sullenly; adding, sharply and bitterly, "Mighty good friends you all are, to wish her married to a beggar, a vagabond harper, rather than to a gentleman."

"Why-to be sure, sir-but vows be vows- - love's love-and to tell truth, sir," (the Welsh blood of the Cardy peasant was now up,) "if any foreign, half Welsh, half wild Indian, sort of gentleman had sent his fine letters, asking my sweetheart's friends to turn me off, in my courting days, and prepare my wench to be his lady, instead of my wife-I'd have-I'd have "

"What would you have done?" asked the other, laughing heartily.

"Cursed him to St Elian!" roared the other; then, dropping his voice into a solemn tone, "put him into his well. I'd have plagued him, I war

rant. But for my part," added the man, archly, "I don't believe there's any squire lover in the case-nor that your honour ever said there is." The agent here vanished, as if in haste, abruptly, down the steep path.

During this conversation, Winifred had reached the river. While she stands expectant, not in happiness, but in tears, it is time to say a few words of the lover so expected.

A

David, who was lately become known "on t'other side Tivy," by the name of Nosdethiol Telynwr, that is, "night-walking harper," was an idle romantic young man, almost grown out of youth, who had long lived away from Wales, where he had neither relative nor friend but one aged woman who had been his first nurse, he having been early left an orphan. Without settled occupation or habits, he was understood almost to depend for bread on the salmon he caught, and trifling presents received. small portable harp, of elegant workmanship, (adorned with "real silver," so ran the tale,) was the companion of his moonlight wanderings. He had a whim of serenading those who had never heard of a serenade," but were not the less sensible of a placid pleasure at being awakened by soft music in some summer night. The simple mountain cottagers, whose slumbers he thus broke or soothed, often attributed the sweet sounds to the kindness of some wandering member of the "Fair Family," or Tylwyth Têg, the fairies. Nor did his figure, if discovered vanishing between the trees, if some one ventured to peep out, in a light night, dispel the illusion; for it appears, that the fairy of old Welsh superstition was not of diminutive stature. That he was

very learned," had somewhere acquired much knowledge of books,

however little of men, was reported on both sides of the river; and these few particulars were almost all that was known even to Winifred, who had so rashly given all her thoughts, all her hopes, all her heart almost, (reserving only one sacred corner for her beloved parents,) to this dangerous stranger-for stranger he was still to her in almost all outer circumstances of life. This was partly owing to the interposition of that narrow river, however trivial a line of demarcation that must appear to English people, accustomed to cross even great rivers of commerce, like the Thames, as they would step over a brook or ditch, by the frequent aid of bridges and boats. In Wales, bridges are too costly to be common. When reared, some unlucky high flood often sweeps them away. Intercourse by ferryboats and fords is liable to long interruptions. The dwellers of opposite sides frequent different markets, and belong frequently to different counties. The nature of the soil also often differs wholly. Hence it happens, that sometimes a farmer, whose eye rests continually on the little farm and fields of another, on the opposite "bank," rising from the river running at the base of his own confronting hill-side, lives on, ignorant almost of the name, quite of the character, of their tenant, to whom he could almost make himself heard by a shout-if it happens that neither ford, ferry, nor bridge, is within short distance.

"The people of t'other side," is an expression implying nearly as much strangeness, and contented ignorance of these neighbours, and no neighbours, as the same spoken by the people of Dover or Calais, of those t'other side the Channel. It was not, therefore, surprising that poor Winifred (albeit not imprudent, save in this new-sprung passion,) might have said with the poet, too truly,

un

had lately disclosed to her dear " known" the ruin impending over her father, the result of his mingled goodnature and indolence, he having permitted the tenants to run in arrears, and suffer dilapidations, as already said;-the long neglect, however, of the East Indian landlord being at the root of the evil, who had been as remiss in his dealings with the steward as the steward with the tenants. The first appearance of this newly appointed agent, who announced the early return of his employer to take possession of the decayed manor-house, was as sudden as ominous of the ruin of old John Bevan. The hope he held out of the "Nabob" espousing his long-remembered child, Winifred, and the consequent salvation of her father, seemed too romantic to be believed. Yet this man proved himself duly accredited by his principal, and exercised his power already with severity. The fine old house of Talylynn, a mansion rising close to a small beautiful lake skirted by an antique park with many deer, was already almost prepared for the reception of the squire from abroad.” Meanwhile-what most excited the ill-will of the tenantry-this odious persecutor of the all-beloved John Bevan had also furbished up a neat old house adjoining the park gate, as a residence for himself; while poor Bevan's farm-house of Llaneol was suffered to fall into ruinous decaythe new steward even neglecting to keep it weather-tight.

Thus decayed, and almost ruinous, it seemed more in harmony with the fortunes of the ever resigned and patient man. But his less placid dame, after losing the services of Winifred, had fallen into a peevish sort of despondency, as the father, missing her society, and its finer species of consolation, had sunk into a more placid apathy.

David had received the hint of her

in that heart;

I but know that I love thee, whatever thou art."

This wild reckless sentiment (though scarcely true to love's nature, which is above all things curious about all belonging to its object) did in her ease illustrate her feelings. Winifred

"squire" with very little philosophy, little temper, and no allowance for the feelings of an only daughter expecting to see a white-headed, fond father, dragged from his home to a jail. He had been incensed; he had wronged her by imputations of sordid motivesof pride, of contempt for himself as a