"Nay, dear friend," said the chaplain gently; "I have no need to reproach you. You have done me no ill-will, but rather striven for my good, and that of her who is dearer to me than life! The hand of God has gone forth against us both, and strewn our path with what do verily appear to our eyes as sharpest thorns; but e'en so shall we not bravely and gladly tread under foot those bitter pricks which crowned our Master's bleeding brow, and murmur not. I am but a sharer in your own past woe, Rhiwallon, a drinker of that cup whose bitter dregs you have long since drained, and I thank you from my heart for every moment you have nobly spent in seeking to avert it from my lips, and those of her you have loved from childhood. Prithee count not one of those precious moments as lost, for assuredly every moment spent in striving to save one pang to a fellow-creature shall not be spent in vain!" "Yet the curse remains!" said Rhiwallon, knitting his fierce brows in perplexed pain and baffled endeavour. "And you, too, brave youth, will waste a life-time over its removal! Ah, perchance, as Sir Galahad of old alone was accounted worthy to bear the Holy Grail, so shall you, God's pure priest and holy knight, alone be vouchsafed the blessing of wiping out the deadly stain so long polluting these crumbling walls! Perchance your God-given eloquence of speech and purity of life shall reap the reward for which the physician, skilled in mere earthly lore, has toiled in vain, and with your blessing invoked upon his head shall my poor master, now weeping in the arms of the last heir to his accursed house, pass hence, at the time appointed, to his final home, in such holy peace and quietness as my poor skill can ne'er hope to bring him. Let your voice ring loud and ceaselessly through this shining, careless valley, Percival, ay, and throughout the length and breadth of Wales and England, an you will, against this fearful evil of drink, which lays waste and brings to ruin the fairest heritage, and wipes out noble families from the face of the earth! Nor let your brave soul's endeavour cease till your own voice is indeed silent in the tomb, but its echo resounding for ever in the ears of the generations to come!"