“Of foreign tongues let scholars brag,
  With fifteen names for a pudding-bag: 
  Two tongues I know ne’er told a lie;
  And their wearers be, my dog and I!”

“That ought to be Harry’s song, and the colly’s too, eh?” said he, pointing to the dear old dog, who sat with his head on Owen’s knee—­“eh, my men?  Here’s a health to the honest man and his dog!”

And all laughed and drank; while Elsley’s dark face looked in at the doorway, and half turned to escape.  Handsome lady-like Mrs. Owen, bustling out of the kitchen with a supper-tray, ran full against him, and uttered a Welsh scream.

“Show me a room, and bring me a pen and paper,” said he; and then started in his turn, as all had started at him; for the two Englishmen looked round, and, behold, to his disgust, the singer was none other than Naylor; the actor of Punch was Wynd.

To have found his betes noires even here, and at such a moment!  And what was worse, to hear Mrs. Owen say,—­“We have no room, sir, unless these gentlemen—­”

“Of course,” said Wynd, jumping up, a child under each arm.  “Mr. Vavasour! we shall be most happy to have your company,—­for a week if you will!”

“Ten minutes’ solitude is all I ask, sir, if I am not intruding too far.”

“Two hours, if you like.  We’ll stay here.  Mrs. Owen,—­the thicker the merrier.”  But Elsley had vanished into a chamber bestrewn with plaids, pipes, hob-nail boots, fishing-tackle, mathematical books, scraps of ore, and the wild confusion of a gownsman’s den.

“The party is taken ill with a poem,” said Wynd.

Naylor stuck out his heavy under-lip and glanced sidelong at his friend.

“With something worse, Ned.  That man’s eye and voice had something uncanny in them.  Mellot said he would go crazed some day; and be hanged if I don’t think he is so now.”

Another five minutes, and Elsley rang the bell violently for hot brandy-and-water.

Mrs. Owen came back looking a little startled, a letter in her hand.

“The gentleman had drunk the liquor off at one draught, and ran out of the house like a wild man.  Harry Owen must go down to Beddgelert instantly with the letter; and there was five shillings to pay for all.”

Harry Owen rises, like a strong and patient beast of burden, ready for any amount of walking, at any hour in the twenty-four.  He has been up Snowdon once to-day already.  He is going up again at twelve to-night, with a German who wants to see the sun rise; he deputes that office to John Roberts and strides out.

“Which way did the gentleman go, Mrs. Owen?” asks Naylor.

“Capel Curig road.”

Naylor whispers to Wynd, who sets the two little girls on the table, and hurries out with him.  They look up the road, and see no one; run a couple of hundred yards, where they catch a sight of the next turn, clear in the moonlight.  There is no one on the road.