 Rhys and his mother are left without any income but are offered a home (and protected against Uncle James) by a simple-minded but generous cobbler called Thomas Bartley, a recent convert.Rhys is apprenticed to Abel Hughes, an elder in the chapel who owns a drapers shop, and moves into Abel's house when his mother dies a short time afterwards.As he grows into adolescence, he falls away from the devout faith that his mother taught him whilst nurturing a secret desire to be a preacher, being dazzled by the status that preachers had in Welsh society at the time.