It was now with Pabo as though he were irresistibly drawn in the direction of Caio, where he knew that Morwen was with tears on her cheeks, her gentle, suffering heart full of him and his desolation and banishment. The night was clear, there was actually not much wind; but autumn rawness was in the air. To the west still hung a dying halo, very faint, and the ground, covered with short grass, was dimly white where pearled with dew, each pearl catching something of the starlight from above. But away, to the south, was a lurid glow, against which the rounded head of Mallaen stood out as ink. Pabo thrust on his way, running when he could, and anon stumbling over plots of gorse or among stones. At length he came out upon the brow, Bronffin, and looked down into the broad basin of Caio. Below him was a fire. It had burned itself out, and lay a bed of glowing cinders, with smoke curling above it, lighted and turned red by the reflection of the fire below. Now and then a lambent flame sprang up, and then died away again. The sound of voices came up from beneath: it was pleasant to Pabo to hear voices, but in his heart was unutterable pain. He looked down on the glowing ruins of his presbytery--where he had lived and been so happy. Hour after hour he sat on the mountain-edge, watching the slowly contracting and fading glow, hearing the sounds of life gradually die away. Then above the range to the left rose the moon, and silvered the white ribbon of the Sarn Helen, the paved road of the old Queen of British race who had married the Roman Emperor Maxentius, and illumined the haze that hung over the river-beds, and far away behind Pen-y-ddinas formed a cloud over the two tarns occupying the bottom of the valley. But all the while Pabo looked only at one and then at another point--this, the fiery reek of his home, that a spot whence shone a small and feeble light--the house of Howel the Tall, beneath whose roof watched and wept his dearest treasure, Morwen. When midnight was overpassed, and none stirred, then did Pabo descend from the heights and approach the ashes of his home. At the glowing embers he dried the tinder. Then he caught up a smoldering brand, turned and reascended the mountain, with the fire from his ruined hearth wherewith to kindle that in his hovel of refuge. CHAPTER XI A MIRACLE Had one been on Bronffin, the mountain-brow overhanging Caio, on the following morning, strange would have been the scene witnessed. Those of the inhabitants who had not fled were engaged in the obsequies of the hermit who had been burned when the presbytery took fire, and whose charred remains had been extricated from the ruins. The corpse was borne on a bier covered with a white sheet; and men and women accompanied, chanting an undulating wail-like dirge, while the priest from Llansawel--a daughter church--preceded the body.