The window was placed (as is
common in old Welsh houses) over the fire-place; with branching chimneys
on either hand, forming a sort of projection on the outside. By this
outlet his escape was easy, even had he been less determined and
desperate than he was. And when he had descended, with a little care, a
little winding, he might elude all observation and pursue his original
intention of going to Ty Glas. The storm had abated, and watery sunbeams were gilding the bay, as Owen
descended from the window, and, stealing along in the broad afternoon
shadows, made his way to the little plateau of green turf in the garden
at the top of a steep precipitous rock, down the abrupt face of which he
had often dropped, by means of a well-secured rope, into the small
sailing-boat (his father’s present, alas! in days gone by) which lay
moored in the deep sea-water below. He had always kept his boat there,
because it was the nearest available spot to the house; but before he
could reach the place—unless, indeed, he crossed a broad sun-lighted
piece of ground in full view of the windows on that side of the house,
and without the shadow of a single sheltering tree or shrub—he had to
skirt round a rude semicircle of underwood, which would have been
considered as a shrubbery had any one taken pains with it. Step by step
he stealthily moved along—hearing voices now, again seeing his father and
stepmother in no distant walk, the Squire evidently caressing and
consoling his wife, who seemed to be urging some point with great
vehemence, again forced to crouch down to avoid being seen by the cook,
returning from the rude kitchen-garden with a handful of herbs. This was
the way the doomed heir of Bodowen left his ancestral house for ever, and
hoped to leave behind him his doom. At length he reached the plateau—he
breathed more freely. He stooped to discover the hidden coil of rope,
kept safe and dry in a hole under a great round flat piece of rock: his
head was bent down; he did not see his father approach, nor did he hear
his footstep for the rush of blood to his head in the stooping effort of
lifting the stone; the Squire had grappled with him before he rose up
again, before he fully knew whose hands detained him, now, when his
liberty of person and action seemed secure. He made a vigorous struggle
to free himself; he wrestled with his father for a moment—he pushed him
hard, and drove him on to the great displaced stone, all unsteady in its
balance. Down went the Squire, down into the deep waters below—down after him went
Owen, half consciously, half unconsciously, partly compelled by the
sudden cessation of any opposing body, partly from a vehement
irrepressible impulse to rescue his father. But he had instinctively
chosen a safer place in the deep seawater pool than that into which his
push had sent his father. The Squire had hit his head with much violence
against the side of the boat, in his fall; it is, indeed, doubtful
whether he was not killed before ever he sank into the sea. But Owen
knew nothing save that the awful doom seemed even now present. He
plunged down, he dived below the water in search of the body which had
none of the elasticity of life to buoy it up; he saw his father in those
depths, he clutched at him, he brought him up and cast him, a dead
weight, into the boat, and exhausted by the effort, he had begun himself
to sink again before he instinctively strove to rise and climb into the
rocking boat. There lay his father, with a deep dent in the side of his
head where the skull had been fractured by his fall; his face blackened
by the arrested course of the blood. Owen felt his pulse, his heart—all
was still. He called him by his name. “Father, father!” he cried, “come back! come back! You never knew how I
loved you! how I could love you still—if—Oh God!”

And the thought of his little child rose before him. “Yes, father,” he
cried afresh, “you never knew how he fell—how he died! Oh, if I had but
had patience to tell you! If you would but have borne with me and
listened! And now it is over! Oh father! father!”

Whether she had heard this wild wailing voice, or whether it was only
that she missed her husband and wanted him for some little every-day
question, or, as was perhaps more likely, she had discovered Owen’s
escape, and come to inform her husband of it, I do not know, but on the
rock, right above his head, as it seemed, Owen heard his stepmother
calling her husband. He was silent, and softly pushed the boat right under the rock till the
sides grated against the stones, and the overhanging branches concealed
him and it from all not on a level with the water. Wet as he was, he lay
down by his dead father the better to conceal himself; and, somehow, the
action recalled those early days of childhood—the first in the Squire’s
widowhood—when Owen had shared his father’s bed, and used to waken him in
the morning to hear one of the old Welsh legends. How long he lay
thus—body chilled, and brain hard-working through the heavy pressure of a
reality as terrible as a nightmare—he never knew; but at length he roused
himself up to think of Nest. Drawing out a great sail, he covered up the body of his father with it
where he lay in the bottom of the boat. Then with his numbed hands he
took the oars, and pulled out into the more open sea toward Criccaeth. He skirted along the coast till he found a shadowed cleft in the dark
rocks; to that point he rowed, and anchored his boat close in land. Then
he mounted, staggering, half longing to fall into the dark waters and be
at rest—half instinctively finding out the surest foot-rests on that
precipitous face of rock, till he was high up, safe landed on the turfy
summit. He ran off, as if pursued, toward Penmorfa; he ran with maddened
energy. Suddenly he paused, turned, ran again with the same speed, and
threw himself prone on the summit, looking down into his boat with
straining eyes to see if there had been any movement of life—any
displacement of a fold of sail-cloth. It was all quiet deep down below,
but as he gazed the shifting light gave the appearance of a slight
movement. Owen ran to a lower part of the rock, stripped, plunged into
the water, and swam to the boat. When there, all was still—awfully
still! For a minute or two, he dared not lift up the cloth. Then
reflecting that the same terror might beset him again—of leaving his
father unaided while yet a spark of life lingered—he removed the
shrouding cover. The eyes looked into his with a dead stare! He closed
the lids and bound up the jaw. Again he looked. This time he raised
himself out of the water and kissed the brow. “It was my doom, father! It would have been better if I had died at my
birth!”

Daylight was fading away. Precious daylight! He swam back, dressed, and
set off afresh for Penmorfa. When he opened the door of Ty Glas, Ellis
Pritchard looked at him reproachfully, from his seat in the
darkly-shadowed chimney-corner. “You’re come at last,” said he.