At the following summer assizes, Abel, Robert, and Thomas Williams were condemned to suffer the full penalty of the law; Jonathan Williams the hunchback and the farmer's remaining sons received sentences of imprisonment of more or less severity; whilst to the landlord of the _Ship and Anchor_ was awarded the well-merited punishment of transportation for life. A few sentences will now suffice to complete my story. At the urgent request of the good couple, to whom I had become sincerely attached, and to whom indeed my services for the journey were, I thought, almost indispensable, I consented to return with them to their home. I did not, however, when giving that consent, intend to remain longer than one evening at Pwlwyn--my leave of absence from my duties having long since expired. But strange to say, when a full week had elapsed I was still lingering in that small and in itself unattractive Welsh village; and it was not until an entire change in my sentiments and in all my prospects for life had been wrought by my visit, that I eventually left it for Ollyhill. During the time she had spent at the hotel whilst engaged in nursing her husband, and especially when upon the way home, Mrs Morgan had made frequent allusion in my presence and in terms of the highest praise to a certain young cousin under whose charge she had left her house and children. But little did I dream that _that_ cousin--the _Lily_ whose name I had so often heard repeated--was _my_ Lily--Lily Thornton! Such, however, upon arriving at Pwlwyn, I found to be the case; and in the surprise and uncontrollable joy of that unexpected meeting, I knew that I, in fact that both of us, had betrayed ourselves. Then followed days full of a bliss so sweet, that resolve as I would, I _could_ not forego it, when in the delightful consciousness of tacitly confessed love, Lily and I wandered forth together, seeking the shady woods and conversing in confiding tones--principally about nothing. At length there came a certain sunny afternoon when, seated side by side upon a rustic bridge, we bent in silence over a little babbling stream, our heads coming into closer and closer proximity, until in the end, with a sudden movement, 'our spirits rushed together in the meeting of the lips.' After that, as any person of the slightest experience in such matters will readily believe, it was--to use a slang phrase--all up with me. I left that bridge an affianced man; and upon returning to Ollyhill I resigned my curacy; and upon receiving Squire Thornton's somewhat reluctant consent to my engagement with his daughter, I obtained a situation in a mercantile house in Liverpool, the principal of which was an uncle of my intended bride. With indefatigable industry I laboured for two years to earn for myself a good position; and at the close of that time took to my bosom, for weal or woe, the wife for whose sake I had quitted the Church and joined the Merchants' Service.