The man himself was not comely. A broad-shouldered, plain man, with a stoop such as is often seen in colliers—a reserved, a serious man, and somewhat shy. Perhaps in this he was a typical Welshman—that he was full of tenderness of heart and deep feeling, but at the least token of ridicule or superciliousness, he closed like a flower against rain, brooded over any injury his feelings may have received, but he said nothing. Centuries of isolation and of wrong done to the Welsh race have had this effect on them. They have been sneered at, swaggered over by domineering Saxons or tyrannical Normans, then exploited by speculative North-countrymen; they have been treated as men to be employed for the advantage of others, and when useless, to be cast aside as broken tools. Their idiosyncrasies have been the subject of joke and scoff; their language has been derided; their aspirations, national and individual, disregarded. This has bred in them a sensitiveness that is foreign to the coarser Saxon—a reserve that forms a crust about the manner that is repellent to the stranger, if in that stranger there be the smallest assumption of superiority. Yet underneath lies the richest, deepest, purest vein of golden love and goodwill that God, who formed the mountains and made man, ever buried in the human heart. Shone had not married till he was some way past thirty, and then, perhaps, more for convenience than that passion which whirls most men into matrimony; and about a year after his marriage his wife gave him a little son, but did not recover the confinement, and died. Shone was left alone in the cottage with a baby, and he had his daily work to accomplish in order that he and his baby might live. He could not neglect his work, and he would not neglect his baby. Some neighbours offered to relieve him of the child, but to this Shone was averse. The baby was his; it was almost the only living being that was absolutely, indisputably his own. And now it was that the fountains of love in that closed and sealed heart opened and gushed forth. He loved that child with a love such as only a mother, one might have supposed, could entertain for a poor little, feeble, wailing lump of flesh. Shone considered what he should do. He would not commit the child to Martha Rees, who had volunteered to take it, for she was a slovenly person, and he could not be sure that she would keep the little creature clean. Nor to Rachel Price, for she was violent tempered when put out: she might lose patience if the child cried, and maltreat it, though usually she was a most good-natured woman. Nor to Alice Tooker, for she was an Englishwoman, and he would not have his child reared save to the sound of the Welsh tongue, and sung to sleep with Welsh lullabies. Then Shone formed his resolve—and to this he adhered for many, many months.