RELICS OF POPULAR SUPERSTITIONS. 



99 



wealth he coveted without the penalty of marriage. He left the 

 h^use muttering, "David Gwynne will be well quit of both these 

 shrews. A man must live in fire who keeps a she tiger." 



Maud understood this inuendo, and it roused her ready spirit 

 of invention and enterprise to save her daughter and defeat her 

 enemy. The deed engrossed by Penmawl lay still on old Arthur 

 Morris's bed clenched in his hand, which had grasped it in the 

 last pang of existence. Why should not his name be added, 

 since that alone was wanting to give Lillian possession of her 

 father's estate, and to punish her mercenary lover ? It was a pre- 

 cious and irrecoverable crisis, which her mother determined not to 

 lose. Suddenly she remembered the vagrant harper who had 

 begged a night's lodging among the straw in her outhouse ; and 

 calling him from his slumber, she asked if he could write his name 

 as a witness to a trifling paper. But this man, whose eyes had 

 something awful and preternatural in them, rephed sternly, " Thy 

 daughter gave me milk in her prosperity, and I will give her 

 bread in her affliction. When the morning star shines, dig under 

 this straw, and that which is sought shall be found." He depart- 

 ed as he spoke, and Maud, no less superstitious than corrupt, was 

 careful to obey him. She searched secretly, and discovered a 

 small leathern bag containing a paper, on which was distinctly 

 written, " I give all to Lillian ap Morris." It had no witnesses, 

 but the signature resembled old Arthur's, and she determined to 

 assert that it was his hand-writing, as its date was the present 

 day. His death was not announced till a late hour of the follow- 

 ing, when the presumptive heir came, as our female Machiavel ex- 

 pected, to claim his inheritance, and was tauntingly shown the 

 paper which consigned it wholly to LilHan. 



But the farthest calculations of knavery are soon baffled, as the 

 most cunning animals are short-sighted. Instead of proffering 

 marriage again to his deserted bride, David Gwynne established a 

 protest against the validity of her father's last deed. Maud and 

 Idwal were arrested on suspicion ; but Lillian absconded with 

 such speed and secrecy, as to baffle the strict search made for her 

 while a court of justice examined the deed, to which her mother 

 had given all the semblance of forgery by asserting more than the 

 truth. It was one of the thousand cases that perplex and dishon- 

 our human judgment. David G Wynne's attorney was, as I have 

 said, the most prosperous one in Llanbadarn, perhaps because one 



