"Nesta yr buten! How is Nest yr buten?"

He looked maliciously into Owen's face to mark the effect of his
words, but was terrified at the expression he read there. He started
off and ran to the door, while Owen tried to check himself, saying
continually, "He is but a child. He does not understand the meaning
of what he says. He is but a child!" Still Robert, now in fancied
security, kept calling out his insulting words, and Owen's hand was
on his gun, grasping it as if to restrain his rising fury.

But when Robert passed on daringly to mocking words relating to the
poor dead child, Owen could bear it no longer; and before the boy was
well aware, Owen was fiercely holding him in an iron clasp with one
hand, while he struck him hard with the other.

In a minute he checked himself. He paused, relaxed his grasp, and,
to his horror, he saw Robert sink to the ground; in fact, the lad was
half-stunned, half-frightened, and thought it best to assume
insensibility.

Owen--miserable Owen--seeing him lie there prostrate, was bitterly
repentant, and would have dragged him to the carved settle, and done
all he could to restore him to his senses, but at this instant the
Squire came in.

Probably, when the household at Bodowen rose that morning, there was
but one among them ignorant of the heir's relation to Nest Pritchard
and her child; for secret as he tried to make his visits to Ty Glas,
they had been too frequent not to be noticed, and Nest's altered