CHAPTER I

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THE GIPSY'S WARNING.

"All within is dark as night; In the windows is no light; And no murmur at the door, So frequent on its hinge before.

Come away: no more of mirth Is here or merry-making sound. The house was builded of the earth, And shall fall again to ground!" --TENNYSON.

"'Tis many a year since the River Spirit hath burst his bonds, and thus run riot in the valley!" soliloquised Jack the boatman, pausing in his task of re-soling a much-worn shoe, to look out, from the tiny window of his workshop, upon the brawling river below, which, swollen by the winter rains to a roaring, foaming current, dashed angrily past the little dwelling close upon its banks, threatening to sweep it bodily away in its fury, while through the valley the wind howled a melancholy accompaniment to the noisy music of the waters, and moaned, like a human being in pain, in the dark woods beyond.

"It will verily be well an my bridge should prove itself equal to so fierce a foe!" continued Jack, leaning his elbows on the window-sill, and gazing out into the blackness, in which the frail hand-bridge, stretched across the river, just showed itself, like a streak of white light, in the surrounding gloom.

Jack was proud of the bridge, for it was his own. The thought of building a bridge over the river had been his own original thought; the device of the bridge had been his own original device, and the money required for its erection had come solely out of his own pocket, advanced for the public good, with no hope of its return till after the lapse of many years, when the penny toll levied upon every crosser should have realised the outlay. The bridge might not be built upon very scientific principles, but in spite of many a laugh at Jack's expense, and many a prophecy from some wise passer-by, that it would last as many nights as days, it had already borne three years' wear, and at least one good winter-flood before this

## particular night with which we have to do. But this night's flood

was a different thing to that of two years back; indeed the country-folk had said, as they had crossed the bridge to market on Saturday morning, that never in their memory had the river risen so high. And though Jack wore a cheerful countenance as he took his toll, and assured each one that his bridge was good for sixty years, deep down in his heart there lurked a secret fear each night, as he lay down to sleep, that he might wake to find it had been carried away while he slept; but since market-day three days had gone by, and still the bridge hung bravely over the roaring stream.

Jack's little home was a noisy one at this flood-time, built, as it was, so close upon the water's edge, that the roar of the river, foaming and dashing over its rocky bed, was like constant thunder in his ear. But he lived all alone, and, as he said, "did not want to hear himself speak," so the noise did not matter. He could ply his shoemaking trade, which he took up between times, when boating was slack, and fishing out of season, just as well with a roar of water in his ear as without. Moreover, he did not know but that "a bit of a noise was company." His mind was, however, a little perturbed to-night; there was something uncanny to his ear in the wild whistling of the wind, and he could not settle to his work as calmly as usual. In fact, he had a superstitious fit upon him, and felt nervous, though he would on no account acknowledge it, even to himself.

In order to explain the reason of this unwonted condition of his usually well-regulated mind, we must go back some few hours, and relate the events of the morning. At his dinner-hour Jack had gone with a bundle of mended boots and shoes to the village, by which name were dignified the dozen or so of thatched and whitewashed cottages, clustered under the brow of Bryn Afon, the old Castle Hill, which loomed above the river and the tiny workshop. Though well content to spend his working hours and solitary nights in his own lonely dwelling, Jack was by no means averse to spending his meal-time hours amongst his neighbours, either discussing political matters with John Jones over the counter of the little shop which undertook to provide the village with the common necessaries of life--each wrapped gratis in the leaves of the most scurrilous and Puritanical of the little grocer's chapel sermons--or speculating with a group of ever-curious and never-satisfied spirits upon the nature of the mysterious curse said to hang over the half-ruined castle on the hill. Perhaps the dreary, monotonous roar of the wind and the waters, and the wild weather generally, had touched a chord of romance in the rough hearts of the villagers on this particular morning, for their converse seemed unable to take any more cheerful and healthy tone than that of the mysterious fortunes of the Bryn Afon family--at no time anything but a depressing subject. "Times back it was a good old family, and as well-kept a place as you could wish to see," said Evans the miller. "So when I was a boy I was wont to hear my old grandfather tell; not that it was so in his time whatever, but his great-grandfather could mind the good old days well enough." "And that reckoning brings us back to a matter of some three hundred years ago," remarked Master Jones reflectively; "for your family, Master Evans, has been a long-lived one these many generations. It would seem verily that the house were haunted, from the curious sounds that have been heard from within, and from the unwillingness of the family to reside therein for the space of more than three or four days together."

"There is no saying," said the Widow Griffiths, pausing in her task of choosing calico for her Dame School children, to shake her head ominously, and add in mysterious tones: "I call to mind the last time I saw the late lord ride by, as I stood at my school-door at the Three Cross Roads--a matter of six years ago--and never a word of him since, save only the passing-bell a few weeks after." "And he a great favourite of King James, whatever," said the miller; "a fine man, verily, to look upon, and as good a friend of our king as any noble gentleman in Wales." "The love of the king stood him not in much good stead," said Master Jones with a Puritanical sneer, "since forsooth he must needs go the way of all his forbears, and die ere he had reached the age of fifty, with the same cloud of mystery hanging over his death-bed! Who knows but that the young man, his son, may not likewise be dead ere now? It is long since we have known him to be at the castle." "He may perchance be there now, for all we know!" said his wife, glancing half askance up the steep greensward; "for who has ever known when the lords of Bryn Afon have come and gone, save for those shriekings and wailings ever heard while they are within yon walls?" "And those times when the shriekings and wailings were at their worst were ever quickly followed by the master's death," said Dame Griffiths. "Verily the curse hangeth heavily, and I for one marvel not that the young lord remains away."

"The last time I saw him," said Jack the boatman, who had listened without speaking, "was seven years gone by, when he tarried some long while at the castle, and was wont to spend many an hour with me, salmon-fishing. A light-hearted young man, with pretty, fair-spoken ways, and many a story to tell of the ways of the Court, and the fondness the king had for his father. How my little girl used to listen, and prick up her ears at the fine tales!" "It had been better for her," said Master Jones, "as I said in my discourse at the chapel after her untimely decease, that she had shown less vain curiosity about the ways of this wicked world. For what was it but an idle curiosity that led her into the subterranean passage, where her end overtook her as a thief in the night?" "Peace, prithee, good neighbours," said Jack wearily; "the child is in another world, where it may be her fault will not be too harshly judged. But I would fain see the curse removed, and the lords of Bryn Afon dwelling among their people, and ruling them for their good, as surely our betters were meant to do. Will it ever be taken away, think you?"

The usual ominous silence and shaking of heads followed this oft-repeated query, but this time the silence was broken by a hoarse voice, muttering in deep, harsh tones, "Will the curse ever be taken away from the hill, say you? Ay, when the boatman's bridge cracks across the middle, and the primrose and the lily float together down the stream! But the curse hath already set the castle walls a-crumbling, and they shall crumble till the end of time!"

Close at Jack the boatman's ear was the voice which spake the mysterious prophecy; and as in anger he turned, to deny the possibility of any such fate being in store for his beloved bridge, he encountered the wild glance of a dark-faced gipsy-woman, whose sudden appearance at the open doorway had already caused the women-gossips to beat a hasty retreat into the farther corner of the shop. "My bridge will stand these hundred years, woman!" he exclaimed indignantly. "It was for a blessing to my neighbours that I built it, and a blessing it shall stand, long after you and I are laid in our graves!"

The old hag laughed harshly; and Mistress Griffiths, laying a persuasive hand on Jack's arm, said entreatingly, "Ah, Jack, thou art never the man to wish aught to stand in the way of taking off the awful curse! Let the bridge break to-night and willing, if the castle curse should go with it!" Jack laughed a sorrowful laugh. "The woman is a witch," he said impatiently, "and her talk has no more meaning than the screaming wind." "Eh!" said the gipsy; and placing her lean hand on his arm, and peering into his face with her coal-black eyes, she chanted in a monotonous tone--

"The curse shall not fall from the castle Till the last heir lies in the grave; And the grave shall lie deep in the river, Wherein sleep the fair and the brave."

"_My_ bridge shall never be the death of the last heir!" muttered Jack savagely, while his friends, in breathless silence, pressed closer to the gipsy. She went on with uplifted finger--

"The bridge shall be broken asunder, Shall sink in the raging deep; And in the dark waters together The primrose and lily shall sleep."

While her listeners were looking at each other with awe-struck faces, the gipsy was gone as suddenly as she had come. No one followed her; the women were too frightened; the men laughed, and declared that it was not worth while. But when they had sufficiently recovered from their surprise to fall into an animated discussion upon her and her rude rhymes, they heard her voice again, singing hoarsely in the distance--

"Together they'll float down the rushing river; In Heaven be one for ever and ever."

"What can she mean, the old witch?" asked Mistress Evans, the miller's wife, in a frightened whisper. "What does a gipsy ever mean, good mistress?" exclaimed the boatman impatiently. "Had I my will, she should verily have long ere now been put in the stocks." And thoroughly out of temper on behalf of his bridge, he went home, and betook himself in somewhat savage mood to his shoemaking, driving in nails with vicious industry.

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