than once Ebben Owens, walking with proper
decorum to chapel on Sunday morning, accompanied by Will and Ann, had
been scandalised at meeting Gethin returning from a surreptitious
scramble on the hillside, with a row of blue eggs strung on a stalk of
grass. A hasty rush into the house to dress, a pell-mell run down the
mountain side, a flurried arrival in the chapel, where Will and his
father had already hung up their hats on the rail at the back of their
seat, did not tend to mitigate the old man's annoyance at his son's
erratic ways.

Gethin was the cause of continual disturbances in the household,
culminating at last in a severer thrashing than usual, and a dismissal
from the home of his childhood--a dismissal spoken in anger, which
would have been repented of ere night had not the boy, exasperated at
his utter inability to rule his wild and roving habits, taken his
father at his word and disappeared from the old homestead.

"Let him go," Ebben Owens had said to the tearful pleading Ann. "Let
him go, child; it will do him good if he can't behave himself at home.
Let him go, like many another rascal, and find out whether cold and
hunger and starvation will suit him. Let him feel a pinch or two, and
he'll soon come home again, and then perhaps he'll have come to his
senses and give us less trouble here."

Ann had cried her eyes red for days, and Will had silently grieved over
the loss of his brother, but he had been prudent, and had said nothing
to increase his father's anger, so the days slipped by and Gethin never
returned.

His father, relenting somewhat (for he seldom remained long in the same
frame of mind), made inquiries of the sea-faring men who visited the
neighbouring coast villages, and learning from them that Gethin had
been taken as cabin boy by an old friend of his, whom he knew to be of
a kindly disposition, felt quite satisfied concerning his son's safety,
and congratulated himself upon the result of his own firmness.

"There's the very thing for him," he thought; "'twill make a man of
him, and 'tis time he should be brought to his senses! and he won't be
so ready with his 'Amens!' again. Ach y fi!"

From time to time as the years sped on, news of Gethin came in a
roundabout way to the farm, and at last a letter from some foreign
port, from which it was evident that the youth, now growing up to
manhood, still retained his bright sunny nature and laughter-loving
ways, together with the warmth