is quick to find healing and forgetfulness. In the Welsh parsonage she
made herself beloved by her amiability and admired for her gifts of
mind.

Among the latter was a talent for story-telling, with which she beguiled
many a long, winter evening. On one such evening she told the story of
her late tragic experiences, disguising it only by giving fictitious
names to the characters. And she told the story with such power and
pathos that, at its conclusion, her auditors were reduced to tears for
the maiden and execrations for her betrayer.

Carried away by the excitement of the moment and the effect she had
produced, she exclaimed: "I, myself, am the person for whom you express
such sorrow." Then, horrified by her indiscretion, she added: "And now,
I suppose, you will drive me from your home." But such was not to be
Mary King's fate. The clergyman, who was a widower, had already almost
lost his heart to her charms; and her sufferings made his conquest
complete. A few weeks later the bells rang merrily out when Mary King
became the wife of her kindly host; and for many a long year there was
no one more beloved or happy in all Wales than the parson's wife, who
had thus romantically come through the storm into a haven of peace.




CHAPTER XI

A SIXTEENTH-CENTURY ELOPEMENT