Then the crowd, both within and without the house, made way for the bearers with their heavy burden, and for the black-cloaked widow and her two eldest orphans to follow.
On account of their tender years, the roughness and distance of the road to be traversed, it had been decided to leave Jonet and William behind, in care of Ales.
But silent William had had his wondering eyes and ears open the whole of the morning; and no sooner did it dawn on his infantile comprehension that his father was being carried away in the big box, and that his mother and brothers were going away with it, than he insisted on going likewise; clung to his mother's skirts, and held fast, neither amenable to persuasion nor command to release her and remain at home with obedient Jonet.
No! He saw his mother and brothers in tears, and the bearers slowly moving away with the coffin in which his father was shut up, and in his baby-ignorance he concluded some great wrong was being done. He had been told by Ales that he would never see his father any more, and must have concluded the others were being taken away also; for when he was carried into the house by main force, he fought and struggled in Owen Griffith's strong arms, and cried with dogged persistence, 'Me will go! me shall go!'
Even when shut up close in the bedroom, he kicked at the door and screamed, 'Let me out, let me out; I will go!' until, after a while, the noise ended in a sob and a scuffle, and busy Ales concluded he had wearied himself out and fallen asleep.
When Ales, some quarter of an hour later, opened the door in compliance with Jonet's piteous entreaties, the room was deserted, and William nowhere to be found.
Kicking at the hard door had hurt his toes, in spite of his new shoes, so he turned round to try his heels. On so doing he discovered that the small window-hole was wide open. In another minute he was across the room, scrambling up on to a box lying beneath the narrow aperture in the thick wall, a look of sudden triumph on his determined round face.
He thrust out his head and beheld a long procession winding in and out of the rocky and uneven road, a multitude of high-crowned hats, some atop of women's linen caps, these rising above a medley of red and grey cloaks, striped petticoats and dark jackets crossed with small shawls, mingling with men's grey coats and blue ones; but it did not occur to the child, as it might strike us, that there was any incongruity in these vari-coloured garments on so solemn an occasion. All to him was new. He had never seen such a concourse of people before; his sole idea was that his mother and his brothers were being borne away after his father, and that he was bound to overtake and bring them back.