Blair Collection > Rhys Lewis, minister of Bethel

2 76 RHYS LEWIS.
" Do you. really mean to sav my fataer is deal ?"' 1 queried.
•' Don't deceive me, now— tell the truth for once."
"Never was truer word spoken," he replied. "You know
your father was fond of drink. Well, both of us had been in
luck a bit. He got hold of too much brass for his own good ;
made too free with the whiskey, and had a stroke. I told him
many times to take care ; but it was no use talking. lie turned
up his toes in Warwick. I happened, as it were, to be, at the
time, in Leamington — for the sake of my health, you know. I
took in Warwick on my journey, and there met your father,
whom I ha2)pened to know. I looked after him as long as he
lived — it was in some not over-respectable public house he had
put up — and emptied his pockets directly the last breath had
gone out of him. He didn't want to die, one mortal bit, knowing
well they are all teetotallers in the other world. But it was his
own fault entirely— I had warned him against the drink. The
Union paid for burying him, I being only, as it were, a friend
of his, you know."
" If you are telling the truth," I remarked, " this is the bc^t
bit of news I ever heard. And if you had only died with him
I should have been perfectly happy."
He simply laughed, and said: "Well, when I die, you, as
my nearest relative, will come in for all my shootintr grounds
— and they are very extensive; reaching from Warwick to
Eeined, in Denbighshire. What do you think ? Tom of
Nant's ghost looks after one end of the estate, and Shak-
speare's after the other. They are the two head keepers,
according to your father. No wonder you want me to die, so
that you may be able to say you own your uncle James's estate."
" Give over fooling, and let me out of this horrible place,"
said I, walking towards the door in the wall,
"Wait a little; what's your hurry.? How does that
old roundhead behave towards you ? Have you any objection
to my visiting you on the sly, when I'm hard up ? I see you're
a bit of a buck, so p'r'aps you'd like to find uncle James look-
ing you up occasionally. Have you any such thing as half a
crown about you, that you can spare ? Where did you get
that watch from ? Now I think of it, what '11 you give for the