The Aydyr was making as much noise as ever, for the summer had been a
wet one; and of course all the people of Aber-Aydyr had their ears wide
open. I showed Bob the bridge and the place of my vision, but did not
explain its meaning, lest my love for him should seem fiduciary; and
the next morning, at his most urgent request, we started afoot for that
dark, sad valley. It was a long walk, and I did not find that twenty
years had shortened it.
“Here we are at last,” I said, “and the place looks the same as ever.
There is the grand old Pen y cada, with the white cloud rolling as
usual; to the left and right are the two other summits, the arms of
the chair of Idris; and over the shoulder of that crag you can catch a
glassy light in the air--that is the reflection of Tal y Llyn.”
“Yes, yes!” he answered impatiently. “I know all that from your picture,
uncle. But show me the place where my father died.”
“It lies immediately under our feet. You see that gray stone down in the
hollow, a few yards from the river brink. There he sat, as I have often
told you, twenty years ago this day. There he was taking his food, when
someone---- Well, well! God knows, but we never shall. My boy, I am
stiff in the knees; go on.”
He went on alone, as I wished him to do, with exactly his father's
step, and glance, figure, face, and stature. Even his dress was of the
silver-gray which his father had been so fond of, and which the kind
young fellow chose to please his widowed mother. I could almost believe
(as a cloudy mantle stole in long folds over the highland, reproducing
the lights, and shades, and gloom of that mysterious day) that the
twenty years were all a dream, and that here was poor George Bowring
going to his murder and his watery grave.
My nerves are good and strong, I trow; and that much must have long been
evident. But I did not know what young Bob's might be, and therefore I
left him to himself. No man should be watched as he stands at the grave
of his wife or mother: neither should a young fellow who sits on the
spot where his father was murdered. Therefore, as soon as our Bob had
descended into the gray stone-pit, in which his dear father must have
breathed his last, I took good care to be out of sight, after observing
that he sat down exactly as his father must have sat, except that his
attitude, of course, was sad, and his face pale and reproachful. Then,
leaving the poor young fellow to his thoughts, I also sat down to
collect myself.
But before I had time to do more than wonder at the mysterious ways of
the world, or of Providence in guiding it; at the manner in which great
wrong lies hidden, and great woe falls unrecompensed; at the dark,
uncertain laws which cover (like an indiscriminate mountain cloud)
the good and the bad, the kind and the cruel, the murdered and the
murderer--a loud shriek rang through the rocky ravine, and up the dark
folds of the mountain.
I started with terror, and rushed forward, and heard myself called, and
saw young Bowring leap up, and stand erect and firm, although with a
gesture of horror. At his feet lay the body of a man struck dead, flung
on its back, with great hands spread on the eyes, and white hair over
them.
No need to ask what it meant. At last the justice of God was manifest.
The murderer lay, a rigid corpse, before the son of the murdered.
“Did you strike him?” I asked.
“Is it likely,” said the youth, “that I would strike an aged man like
that? I assure you I never had such a fright in my life. This poor old
fellow came on me quite suddenly, from behind a rock, when all my mind
was full of my father; and his eyes met mine, and down he fell, as if I
had shot him through the heart!”
“You have done no less,” I answered; and then I stooped over the corpse
(as I had stooped over the corpse of its victim), and the whole of my
strength was required to draw the great knotted hands from the eyes,
upon which they were cramped with a spasm not yet relaxed.
“It is Hopkin ap Howel!” I cried, as the great eyes, glaring with the
horror of death, stood forth. “Black Hopkin once, white Hopkin now!
Robert Bowring, you have slain the man who slew your father.”
“You know that I never meant to do it,” said Bob. “Surely, uncle, it was
his own fault!”
“How did he come? I see no way. He was not here when I showed you the
place, or else we must have seen him.”
“He came round the corner of that rock, that stands in front of the
furze-bush.”
Now that we had the clue, a little examination showed the track. Behind
the furze-bush, a natural tunnel of rock, not more than a few yards
long, led into a narrow gorge covered with brushwood, and winding into
the valley below the farmhouse of the Dewless Crags. Thither we hurried
to obtain assistance, and there the whole mystery was explained.
Black Hopkin (who stole behind George Bowring and stunned, or, perhaps,
slew him with one vile blow) has this and this only to say at the
Bar--that he did it through love of his daughter.
Gwenthlian, the last of seven, lay dying on the day when my friend and
myself came up the valley of the Aydyr. Her father, a man of enormous
power of will and passion, as well as muscle, rushed forth of the house
like a madman, when the doctor from Dolgelly told him that nothing more
remained except to await the good time of heaven. It was the same deadly
decline which had slain every one of his children at that same age, and
now must extinguish a long descended and slowly impoverished family.
“If I had but a gold watch I could save her!” he cried in his agony, as
he left the house. “Ever since the old gold watch was sold, they have
died--they have died! They are gone, one after one, the last of all my
children!”
In these lonely valleys lurks a strange old superstition that even Death
must listen to the voice of Time in gold; that, when the scanty numbered
moments of the sick are fleeting, a gold watch laid in the wasted palm,
and pointing the earthly hours, compels the scythe of Death to pause,
the timeless power to bow before the two great gods of the human
race--time and gold.
Poor George in the valley must have shown his watch. The despairing
father must have been struck with crafty madness at the sight. The
watch was placed in his daughter's palm; but Death had no regard for
it. Thenceforth Black Hopkin was a blasted man, racked with remorse and
heart-disease, sometimes raving, always roving, but finding no place
of repentance. And it must have been a happy stroke--if he had made
his peace above, which none of us can deal with--when the throb of his
long-worn heart stood still at the vision of his victim, and his soul
took flight to realms that have no gold and no chronometer.