at my feet, and by its flickering light I could see in their niches
on every side of me the long lines of dead who had lain there for
centuries. And I was alone with them, locked in with them; no living
creature within call! And I was so deathly cold. There was a great
block of ice on my chest, and slabs of it were packed about my limbs
so tightly that I could not move. I could only feel that horrible,
glassy cold which I knew had frozen the marrow in my bones and turned
my blood to jelly; and the pain of it was something which I have no
words to describe. I tried to call out, but the ice was on my chest,
and I could hardly breathe. Then for a moment I lay trying to collect
my thoughts. I did not know where I was. I did not know that I was in
the vault of my ancestors. I only felt that I had been wandering and
wandering in some dim, far-off land looking for someone I could never
find, and that suddenly I had come into another world and found rest.
But although I did not know that I was in the vault at Rhyd-Alwyn, and
that my name was Weir Penrhyn, I knew that I was laid out as a corpse,
and that the dead were about me. Child as I was, it seemed to me that
I must go frantic with the horror of the thing, stretched out in that
ghastly place, a storm roaring about me, bound hand and foot, unable
to cry for help. I think that if I had been left there all night I
should have died again or lost my mind, but in a moment I heard a
noise at the grating and men's voices.

"'I must go in and see her once more,' I heard a strange voice say.
'It seems cruelty to leave her alone in this storm.' And then a
man came in and bent over me. In a moment he called sharply,
'Madoc!--bring me the light.' And then another man came, and I looked
up into two strange, eager, almost terrified faces. I heard incoherent
and excited voices, then the ice was dashed off my chest and I was
caught up in a pair of strong arms and borne swiftly to the house.