butter, his father looked at him with a tender, admiring gaze. Will
had always been his favourite. Gethin, the eldest son, had never taken
hold of his affections; he had been the mother's favourite, and after
her death had drifted further and further out of his father's good
graces. The boy's nature was a complete contrast to that of his own
and second son, for Gethin was bold and daring, while they were wary
and secret; he was restless and mischievous, while his brother was
quiet and sedate; he was constantly getting into scrapes, while Will
always managed to steer clear of censure. Gethin hated his books too,
and, worse than all, he paid but scant regard to the services in the
chapel, which held such an important place in the estimation of the
rest of the household. More than once Ebben Owens, walking with proper
decorum to chapel on Sunday morning, accompanied by Will and Ann, had
been scandalised at meeting Gethin returning from a surreptitious
scramble on the hillside, with a row of blue eggs strung on a stalk of
grass. A hasty rush into the house to dress, a pell-mell run down the
mountain side, a flurried arrival in the chapel, where Will and his
father had already hung up their hats on the rail at the back of their
seat, did not tend to mitigate the old man's annoyance at his son's
erratic ways.

Gethin was the cause of continual disturbances in the household,
culminating at last in a severer thrashing than usual, and a dismissal
from the home of his childhood--a dismissal spoken in anger, which
would have been repented of ere night had not the boy, exasperated at
his utter inability to rule his wild and roving habits, taken his
father at his word and disappeared from the old homestead.

"Let him go," Ebben Owens had said to the tearful pleading Ann. "Let
him go, child; it will do him good if he can't behave himself at home.