her great delight, the Lord and Lady Bryn Afon to their castle on the hill-top, there to remain until her presentation to her father, so long dreaded and yet hoped-for, and the wedding itself--dream of bliss as yet scarce fully realised in thought--should be over. And with them came the chaplain and the Black Horseman, ever in faithful attendance; and Percival, being inducted to his living, entered upon his new work in all the joy and gladness of his marriage prospects, drowning his impatience for his bride by incessant labour and study, varied only by those preparations in the now-vacated vicarage which were necessary ere they entered it together as their home. Those well-loved volumes, cherished companions of Shanno's childhood and youth, were, to her great joy, not far removed, Master Rhys choosing still to reside in the parish, and taking for himself a snug, ivy-covered cot but a stone's-throw from the parsonage door, where she herself arranged for him his treasured books in the order he loved, and which she knew so well. And so, the wedding being fixed to take place in the merry month of May, Lady Bryn Afon, ere presenting her daughter to her still unknown father, or permitting her birth to be made known in the neighbourhood, took her once more--during a brief visit of the earl to town--to the lonely farmstead Glyn Melen, to spend some few last days with her alone in the quiet solitudes below Craig Aran heights, and there to gain strength herself for the impending revelation. CHAPTER XXVIII. THE GIPSY'S TALE. "Every sense Had been o'erstrung by pangs intense, And each frail fibre of her brain (As bow-strings when relaxed by rain The erring arrow launch aside) Sent forth her Thoughts all wild and wide." --BYRON.