Forgive the old
blindness, and come and take your place again beside me."
And as Owen took the hand that would have raised him and kissed it,
the old king added in the voice of one from whom tears are not so
far:
"I have wearied for you, Owen, my nephew. Sorely did I wrong you in
my haste in the old days, and bitterly have I been punished. I pray
you forgive."
Then Owen rose, and it seemed to me that on the king the weight of
years had fallen suddenly, so that he had grown weak and needful of
the strong arm of the steadfast prince who stood before him, and I
took the arm of the steward and pulled him unresisting through the
doorway, so that what greeting those two might have for one another
should be their own.
Then said the steward to me as we looked at one another:
"This is the best day for us all that has been since the prince who
has come back left us. There will be joy through all Cornwall."
But I knew that what I dreaded had come to pass, and that from
henceforth the way of the prince of Cornwall and of the house-carle
captain of Ina's court must lie apart, and I had no answer for him.
CHAPTER V. HOW OSWALD FELL INTO BAD HANDS, AND FARED EVILLY, ON THE
QUANTOCKS.
It would be long for me to tell how presently Owen called me in to
speak with the king, and how he owned me as his foster son in such
wise that Gerent smiled on him, and spoke most kindly to me as
though I had indeed been a kinsman of his own.
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