The pleasant summer voyage is over.  The Waterwitch is lounging off Port Madoc, waiting for her crew.  The said crow are busy on shore drinking the ladies’ healths, with a couple of sovereigns which Valencia has given them, in her sister’s name and her own.  The ladies, under the care of Elsley, and the far more practical care of Mr. Bowie, are rattling along among children, maids, and boxes, over the sandy flats of the Traeth Mawr, beside the long reaches of the lazy stream, with the blue surges of the hills in front, and the silver sea behind.  Soon they begin to pass wooded knolls, islets of rock in the alluvial plain.  The higher peaks of Snowdon sink down behind the lower spurs in front; the plain narrows; closes in, walled round with woodlands clinging to the steep hill-sides; and, at last, they enter the narrow gorge of Pont-Aberglaslyn,—­pretty enough no doubt, but much over-praised; for there are in Devon alone a dozen passes far grander, both for form and size.

Soon they emerge again on flat meadows, mountain-cradled; and the grave of the mythic greyhound, and the fair old church, shrouded in tall trees; and last, but not least, at the famous Leek Hotel, where ruleth Mrs. Lewis, great and wise, over the four months’ Babylon of guides, cars, chambermaids, tourists, artists, and reading-parties, camp-stools, telescopes, poetry-books, blue uglies, red petticoats, and parasols of every hue.

There they settle down in the best rooms in the house, and all goes as merrily as it can, while the horrors which they have left behind them hang, like a black background, to all their thoughts.  However, both Scoutbush and Campbell send as cheerful reports as they honestly can; and gradually the exceeding beauty of the scenery, and the amusing bustle of the village, make them forget, perhaps, a good deal which they ought to have remembered.

As for poor Lucia, no one will complain of her for being happy; for feeling that she has got a holiday, the first for now four years, and trying to enjoy it to the utmost.  She has no household cares.  Mr. Bowie manages everything, and does so, in order to keep up the honour of the family, on a somewhat magnificent scale.  The children, in that bracing air, are better than she has ever seen them.  She has Valencia all to herself; and Elsley, in spite of the dark fancies over which he has been brooding, is better behaved, on the whole, than usual.

He has escaped—­so he considers—­escaped from Campbell, above all from Thurnall.  From himself, indeed, he has not escaped; but the company of self is, on the whole, more pleasant to him than otherwise just now.  For though he may turn up his nose at tourists and reading-parties, and long for contemplative solitude, yet there is a certain pleasure to some people, and often strongest in those who pretend most shyness, in the “digito monstrari, et diceri, hic est:”  in taking for granted that everybody has read his poems; that everybody is saying in their hearts, “There goes Mr. Vavasour the distinguished poet.  I wonder what he is writing now?  I wonder where he has been to-day, and what he has been thinking of.”