much-dreaded day arrived and found him still living, their enthusiasm carried them in one body, men, women, and children, to the hillside, where such a ringing of Percival's new peal of bells sounded out for hours over hill and dale as brought men running eagerly from the neighbouring hamlets to ask if the traitor Cromwell's head were indeed off at last! And at her father's bedside Shanno wept in mingled joy and pain at the merry pealing of the bells, and the earl himself lay quietly listening with a smile of mingled amusement and gratitude to the noisy demonstration of his devoted villagers. "And my people indeed cross my accursed threshold day after day to ask for me?" he said wistfully. "Then if so, the curse is verily passing away from my house, and I may indeed hope to die of these wounds, honourably, for my king. Death is not far from me, but each day I dread lest my sin may yet find me out, and bring me to the horrible end of my forefathers! I would fain be remembered in the prayers of the poor, whom I have to my shame so neglected in the past, and go hence with the thought that they no longer shun my walls as the enclosure of dark and dreadful horrors!" "They come daily to ask for your health," said Percival, "and to offer you the love they have long stored up for you in their faithful hearts. And all their dread of crossing your threshold is indeed past--driven from their minds by the knowledge that one so fair and sweet as your loved Shanno has herself now long dwelt within these grim old walls, and that from her pure presence every accursed thing must needs have fled away. She has undone the curse of your house, my lord, and if I have been privileged to help her with the efforts to which my love for yourself and her has prompted me I am thankful to God for it, as I am also thankful from my inmost heart to your brave physician, our dear Rhiwallon--God rest his soul!--whose life was so nobly given to the same end! Ap Gryffyth's words shall have no further power to harm you, my dear lord and father! Let their sting be for ever forgotten, and the thought that you are about to die for your loved sovereign of the wounds which you have so bravely suffered on his behalf banish for aye from your mind all recollection of the sin of your erring forefather."