Presently a light foot passed, stopped at the
door, and made a sharp scratch on it with some
metal instrument.

It was the key. The time was not ripe to use
it, but good Hannah had taken this way to let
him know she had got it.

This little scratch outside his door, oh it made
his heart leap and thrill. One great difficulty
was overcome. He waited, and waited, but with
glowing, hopeful heart; and at last a foot came
swiftly, the key turned, and Hannah opened the
door. She had a bull's-eye lantern.

"Take your shoes in your hand," she
whispered, "and follow me."

He followed her. She led him in and out, to
the door of the public room belonging to the
second class patients. Then she drew her whistle,
and breathed very softly. Brown answered as
softly from the other end. He was waiting at
the opposite door.

"All right," said she; "the dangerous part is
over." She put a key into the door, and said
very softly, "Good-by."

"God bless you, Hannah," said Alfred, with
deep emotion. "God in heaven bless you for
this."

"He will, he does," said the single-hearted
girl, and put her other hand to her breast with a
great gulp. She opened the door slowly. "Good-
by, dear. I shall never see you again."

And so these two parted  for Hannah could
not bear the sight of Giles at that moment. He
was welcome to Alfred though, most welcome,
and conducted him by devious ways to the
kitchen, lantern in hand.

He opened the kitchen door softly, and saw
two burly strangers seated at a table, eating with
all their souls, and Mrs. Archbold standing
before the fire, but looking towards him: for she
had heard his footsteps ever so far off.

The men looked up, and saw Alfred. They
rose to their feet, and said, "This will be the
gentleman, madam?"

"Yes," said Mrs. Archbold.

"Your servant, sir," said the men very civilly.
"If you are ready, we are."

BARDS IN RAILWAY TIMES.

SURELY, never was any place of assemblage
much less bardic in its aspect than Swansea—
a busy, grim, ill-built town—to be approached
through clouds of copper-smoke, which make
the traveller feel as if he was digesting essence
of new pence.— Save for a scrap of an old castle—
and above the town a background of soft and
rather wild hills, here and there studded with
charming villas, overlooking a sea-view, with a
headland and a lighthouse—Swansea is as
unbardic to see as Leeds, or Oldham, or any modern
Lancashire or Yorkshire town, knee-deep in its
cinder-heaps, and cut into quarters with tramroads
and viaducts.— Neither are the descendants
of the Druidesses as plentious as they were in
South Wales. Time was, and in the memory of
not very old men, when the market-place of Swansea
was like a poppy-bed of three colours, scarlet,
white, and black, flaunted in petticoat, cap, and
hat, by the Winifreds and Peggys who sold their
commodities to the men of Glamorgan, or to
foreign sailors thrown on shore by bad weather
(and I remember a wrecked Breton crew, who
then, by aid of a language which was equivalent
to bad or good Welsh, managed to buy what
they sold with the uttermost clearness).

The local journals remind us how Eisteddfods,
with all the glory of their bardic ceremonies,
not many years ago held session at the Lamb
and Flag, up the Swansea valley—or at the
Cadwallader Arms somewhere else—with a tipsy
Reverend Monkbarns in the chair. Of later years
light has forced its way in, even among the sepul-
chres of the Druids, and with light some discrimi-
nation of that which is true from that which is
false.

The Bards, nevertheless, still congregate in
Wales, north and south. There was a rival
Eisteddfod held not many weeks ago at Rhyl.
The other day (as the Star of Gwent reported) a
Druidical pic-nic was held on a Sunday at Garth
Maelwg, a medicinal spring on a mountain near
Llantrissent. The Welsh people obviously cling
to this old festival of theirs; and seeing that
there is reality in their love, let me tell something
of what was to be seen and heard at the
late successful Swansea festival—which was the
orthodox Eisteddfod of the year.

Hark to the tune with which these stately
gatherings is opened:

"THE TRUTH AGAINST THE WORLD.—In the
year One Thousand Eight Hundred and Sixty-
three, the sun approaching the Autumnal
Equinox, in the forenoon of the First day of
September, after due proclamation and notice
of one year and a day, this Gorsedd is opened
within the Borough of Swansea, in the province
of Gwent, with invitation to all who may assemble here,
where no weapon is unsheathed,
and where judgment will be pronounced upon
all compositions and works of merit submitted
for adjudication, in the face of the sun and the
eye of light."—The Truth against the World.

Inimical Saxon eyes can liken the above
proclamation of Welsh truth against a wicked
world everywhere else, to nothing so much as
one of the Chinese proclamations opening the
Feast of Lanterns, or declaring that the sons and
daughters of the Celestial Empire may now go
out and gather Pekoe to sell to the barbarians.

To this prelude succeeded, at Swansea as
elsewhere, a thrilling and mystical ceremony
transacted at an altar, from which radiated
stones, canonically arranged in a dirty meadow—
and where, undisturbed by the clanging of boiler-
makers, and the screech of the steam-whistle, as
the train rushed in from Oystermouth, Bards
took their degrees, and guests, who clung to the
old tradition, were elected Ovates—female, as
well as male.

There have been such phenomena as great
ladies who have trifled with antiquarianism, and
who have unpronounceable honorary titles,