our conversation, but after an admiring "Well! Well!" as a tribute to my linguistic attainments, he turned away in order to visit his head labourer, John Lewis, who was cutting bracken on the distant lea against the sky-line. I accompanied my host so far as the farm gate, but declined to walk with him to the upland, whither I watched him proceed alone. With the master and man busy over the fern stacking, with the mistress and maids employed within the dairy or kitchen, the way was clear before me. I turned my eyes with mixed feelings towards the indicated byre, which stood next to a row of newly thatched ricks of oats and barley, the spoils of the lately garnered harvest. In that humble structure I knew there tarried now for me the messenger of Fate, the arbiter of my destiny. It was as useless, as it would have been cowardly, to evade or postpone the inevitable interview, so without further ado I carefully shut the yard gate and slowly picked my steps through the stones and mire to the open doorway of the shippen. X The cow-house at Pen Maelgwyn was a lengthy rather dilapidated building, and in its atmosphere of semi-darkness and bovine stuffiness I groped my way along the narrow passage between the crazy old mud wall and the wooden railing which secured the beasts. At the farther end was a square pen wherein the calves were kept, and it was here that at length I chanced on Fajal who was busily occupied in feeding his charges. On noticing me approach, he made an end of his task, and letting down the slip rail advanced to accost me in the gangway. Here he sank on his knees upon the slimy cobbles, at the same time catching hold of my coat with uplifted hands. This unexpected attitude of worship and devotion at once struck me unpleasantly; I deemed it insincere and inappropriate; and I repelled my suppliant in no gracious manner, striving to disengage myself from his grasp. "I had a better esteem of you, Fajal," I began in tones of reproachful chagrin, "than that you should still attempt to mock me by persisting in this threadbare pretence of a subject and his king. You know who I am, and what I am in the eyes of the body to which you belong; so why indulge in this sickly acting when there is no stage and no necessity for hypocrisy? Speak to me as man to man. Tell me what you wish to say, but tell it in the spirit of plain truth and reality." Nevertheless, crouching yet more abjectly into the mire, Fajal still clung obstinately to my knees and even endeavoured to kiss my feet as he started to speak in a hollow voice that suggested intense emotion kept with difficulty under control.