o get away from the Boers, but I had not the courage to
present myself before you till I had done something to regain your
good opinion. I have got now good employment in London and I'm even
reading up Law. We will talk of that by and bye but I tell you
now--from my heart--I am a different David to the one you knew, and
you shall never regret taking me back."

Both father and son were crying now, for emotion especially in Wales
is catching. But the father laughed through his tears; and
incoherently thanked God for the return of the prodigal--a fine
upstanding lad--whole and sound. "No taint about _you_, Davy, _I'll_
be bound. Why your voice alone shows you've been a clean liver. It's
music in my ears, and if I could see as well as I can hear I'd wager
you're a handsome lad and have lost much of your foolishness. Davy,
lad" (lowering his voice) "you've no cause to be anxious about
Jenny. She--she--had a boy, but we got her married to a miner--I
made it right with him. She has another child now, but they're being
brought up together. We won't refer to it again. She lives twenty
miles from here, at Gower--and ... and ... there's an end of it....

"Now you won't run away back to London till you're obliged? Where's
your luggage? At Pontyffynon?"

"No," said David, a little non-plussed at evidences of his dissolute
past and this unexpected fatherhood assumed on his account. "I
haven't more luggage than what is contained in my bicycle bag. But
don't let that concern you. I'll go over to Swansea one day or some
nearer town and buy what may be necessary, and I'll stay with you
all my holidays, tell you all my plans, and even after I go back to
London I'll always come down here when I can get away. For the
present I'm going simply to enjoy myself for the first time in my
life. The last four years we'll look on as a horrid dream. What a
paradise you live in." His eye ranged over the two-storeyed,
soundly-built stone house facing south, with mountains behind and
the western sun throwing shafts of warm yellow green over the lawn
and the flower beds; over clumps of elms in the middle, southern
distance, that might have been planted by the Romans (who loved this
part of Wales). Bees, butterflies and swallows were in the air; the
distant lowing of kine, the scent of the roses, the clatter in the
kitchen where Nannie aided by another female servant was preparing
supper, even the barking of a watch dog; aware that something
unusual w