“They long above all to see your faces once more, but they know how perilous the journey is, even if you could be free. And they entreated you for _their_ sake, and your own, and your people’s, not to come unless it is safe.” “But we are not free!” said Baithene; “do they know that? Do they think any toils or perils could ever have kept us from them if we were free to go?” Dewi’s eyes sparkled with a consciousness of having good tidings to bring, a remedy, as he thought, for all their woes. “When you open the packet and empty the bag,” said he, “you will see that you have freedom in your own hands.” And he began to untwist the ropes around the packet, while Baithene opened the bag. In the bag there were coins, gold, silver, and copper; in the packet were costly silks, and store of fine linen and woollen raiment. Finally Dewi drew from another hiding-place a box, which he presented to Ethne; it contained her mother’s jewels, carefully wrought gold and silver torques and bracelets and armlets, with clasps of gems and precious stones. When Ethne saw the precious things she had clasped around her mother’s neck, and her mother around her own from childhood, she hid her face on her brother’s shoulder and burst into a passion of weeping. When she could speak she turned to Dewi, fearing to seem ungrateful to him. “You have been all but starved many a time, I know,” she said, “whilst you were keeping sacredly all these treasures to bring to us!” Then one by one she recognized other humbler ornaments, priceless to her heart from the very smallness of their value, coming as she knew they did from the poverty of those who in giving them had given the best they had. “This is old Brian’s,” they said, “who died by the pirate’s spear in trying to save us; and this is his mother’s; and this is from our own old nurse, the one precious heirloom of her house.” “Yes,” replied Dewi; “everything precious your people possessed they insisted on my bringing, till I could carry no more. What were gold and silver to them, they said, when you, the jewels of the hearts of all, were lost?” A pang shot through Ethne’s heart that they could for a moment have been interested in any one or anything else while these faithful hearts were thus mourning and wearying for them. Something of this she said to Baithene. “Yet what could we have done?” she added; “how could we live anywhere for anytime without loving?” “Surely _you_ could not, darling,” he replied. “The Heavenly Father made you that way.” After a time Damaris returned with Fabricius. “What are all these treasures?” Fabricius asked; and Dewi answered through Baithene— “These, my lord, are the ransoms sent by the Irish king and his people to the prince and princess, their son and daughter, that they may be restored to their home and their land.”