was a good boy always, but I never loved him as I loved the
other. Gethin had a bad character because he stole the apples from the
orchard, and he took Phil Graig's boat one day without asking leave,
and there was huboob all over the village, and his father was mad with
anger, and threatened to give him a thrashing; but in the evening
Gethin brought the boat back quite safely. He had been as far as
Ynysoer, and he brought back a creel full of fish for Phil, to make up.
Phil made a good penny by the fish, and forgave the boy bach; but his
father was thorny to Gethin for a long time. Then at last he did
something--I never knew what--that offended his father bitterly, and he
was sent away, and never came back again."

"Mother," said Morva solemnly, "I have found out what he did. He got
his mother's Bible and he wrote some dreadful things in it, and made a
fearful picture."

"Picture of what?" asked the old woman.

"A picture of flames and fire, and the devil toasting a man on it, and
a song about the devil. Here it is; I remember every word," and she
repeated it word for word, it having sunk deeply into her mind. "Then
at the bottom he had written, 'Hallelujah, Amen! Gethin Owens
Garthowen.'"

A smile overspread Sara's countenance as she observed Morva's
solemnity, a smile which somewhat lessened the girl's disquietude.

"Was it so very wicked, mother?"

"Wicked? No," said the old woman. "What wonder was it that the boy
drew a picture of the things that he heard every Sunday in
chapel--God's never-ending anger, and the devil's gathering in the
precious souls which He has created. That would be a failure, Morva,
and God can't fail in anything. No, no," she added shrewdly, nodding
her head, "He will punish us for our sins, but the devil is not going
to triumph over the Almighty in the end."

Morva pondered seriously as she fed the fire from a heap of dried furze
piled up in the corner behind the big chimney.

"I was very little when Gethin went away, but I remember it. Now tell
me about the night when first I came to you. I love that story as much
now as I did when I was a child."

"That night," said Sara, "oh! that night, my child. I see it as
plainly as I have seen the gold of the sunset to-night. It had been
blowing all day from the north-west till the bay was like a pot of
boiling milk. It was about sunset (although we couldn't see the sun),
there was a dark red glow over everything as if it w