Page:Once a Week Volume V.djvu/330

 . 14, 1861.] 



least a generation. I was shut up by stress of rain in a wretched little inn at Tryssidloes, unable to climb mountains, fish, or take sketches, when a letter arrived from the sister to whom I had written for information. At the point where the four closely-written pages—for postage was, in those times, a costly item—were traversed by what feminine correspondents called “crossings,” I found the following sentence:—“The name of the family you ask about is Griffith, people with a long pedigree, of course, being Welsh, and I believe with a grand old house and a good property. They live at Talglyn Hall, at the foot of Cader Idris, so if you go that way you can look them up. It was the father of the present squire who quarrelled with grandpapa, fifty years ago, and mamma says he behaved most shamefully, but she has forgotten in what manner. They are, you know, our second-cousins,” &c.

On such slight events, to all appearance, do our fortunes depend, that this trivial letter may be truly said to have coloured my whole future life. I have often tried to speculate on what that life might have been, had my sister delayed writing but a single day more, in which case I should have been gone from the neighbourhood before the arrival of her letter. However, the letter came; the information it gave reached me at a critical moment, just as I was about to start with post-horses for a more civilised place. It so happened, too, that I was within a few miles of Cader Idris. I could see the blue peak of the steep mountain, looming gigantic through the rain, even from the little window of the inn parlour in which I had been for three days a prisoner. Talglyn Hall must, therefore, be of easy access. I countermanded the post-chaise: I wrote a note, couched in that diplomatic style on which young men plume themselves, and I sent it by a messenger to “Squire Griffith’s.” Before the long summer day was spent, Mr. Griffith answered the note in person. I found him a capital specimen of the Welsh gentleman—spirited, hospitable, and rather choleric and imperious. But the brighter side of his character was the one most prominent, and that it was which was presented to me. He