his parishioners, and thus added to his unpopularity. In spite of
this, Cardo was an immense favourite, his frank and genial
manner--inherited from his mother, who was thoroughly Welsh--making its
way easily to the warm Welsh hearts. There was a deep well of
tenderness, almost of pity, within him for his cold stern father, a
longing to break through his reserve, a hankering after the loving ways
of home life, which he missed though he had never known them. The cold
Fleming had very little part in Cardo's nature, and, with his
enthusiastic Welsh sympathies, he was wont to regret and disclaim his
connection with these ancient ancestors. His father's pedigree,
however, made it very plain that the Gwynnes of Brynderyn were
descended from Gwayn, a Flemish wool merchant who had settled there in
the reign of Henry I.--these settlers being protected and encouraged by
the English king, who found their peaceable, industrious habits a great
contrast to the turbulence and restlessness of the Welsh under their
foreign yoke. Time has done but little to soften the difference
between the Welsh and Flemish characters; they have never really
amalgamated, and to this day the descendants of the Flemings remain a
separate people in language, disposition, and appearance. In
Pembrokeshire, Gower, and Radnorshire, we find them still flourishing,
and for some distance along the coast northwards from Pembrokeshire
there are still families, and even whole hamlets, descended from them,
exhibiting traits of character and peculiarities of manner easily
discernible to an observant eye.

Before the Vicar retired to rest he took down from a shelf an old
Bible, from which he read a chapter, and, closing the book, knelt down
to pray. As he rose from his knees, the last words on his lips were,
"Caradoc, my beloved son!"