The inhabitants of the white mountain village of K----, in
Cardiganshire, were all retired to rest, it being ten o'clock. No--a
single light twinkled from under eaves of thick and mossy thatch, in one
cottage apart, and neater than the rest, that skirted the steep
_street_, (as the salmon fishers, its chief inhabitants, were pleased to
call it,) being, indeed, the rock, thinly covered with the soil, and
fringed with long grass, but rudely smoothed, where very rugged, by art,
for the transit of a _gamboo_ (cart with small wheels of entire wood) or
sledge. The moonlight slept in unbroken lustre on the houses of one
story, or without any but what the roof slope formed, and several
appearances marked it as a fisher village. A black, oval, pitched
basket, as it appeared, hung against the wall of several of the
cottages, being the _coracle_, or boat for one person, much used on the
larger Welsh rivers, very primitive in form and construction, being
precisely described by Caesar in his account of the ancient Britons.
Dried salmon and other fish also adorned others, pleasingly hinting of
the general honesty and mutual confidence of the humble natives, poor as
they were, for strangers were never thought of; the road, such as it
was, merely mounting up to "the hill" (the lofty desert of sheepwalk) on
one hand, and descending steeply to the river Tivy on the other. A
deadened thunder, rising from some fall and brawling shallow "rapid" of
the river, was the only sound, except the hooting of an owl from some
old ivied building, a ruin apparently, visible on the olive-hued
precipice behind. The russet mass of mountain, bulging, as it were, over
the little range of cots, gave an air of security to their picturesque
white beauty; while silver clouds curled and rolled in masses, grandly
veiling their higher peaks, and sometimes canopied the roofs, many
reddened with wall-flower; the walls also exhibiting streaks of green,
where rains had drenched the vegetating thatch and washed down its tint
of yellow green. Aged trees, green even to the trunks, luxuriant ivy
enveloping them as well as the branches, stretched their huge arms down
the declivity leading to the Tivy, the flashing of whose waters, through
its rich fringe of underwood, caught the eye of any one standing on the
ridge above. A solitary figure, tall and muffled, did stand with his
back in contact with one of these oaks, so as to be hardly
distinguishable from the trunk.
A poet might imagine, looking at a Welsh village by moonlight, thus
embosomed in pastoral mountains, canopied with those silver mists whose
very motion was peace, and lulled by those soft solemn sounds, more
peace-breathing than even silence, that _there_, at least, care never
came; there peace, "if to be found in the world," would be surely found;
and soon that one light moving--that prettier painted door stealthily
opening--would prove that peace confined to the elements only. "Here I
am!" would be groaned to his mind's ear by the ubiquitous, foul fiend,
Care; for thence emerged a female form--_simplex munditiis_--the exact
description of it as to attire--rather tall than otherwise, but its
chief characteristic, a drooping kind of bowed gait, in affecting unison
with a melancholy settled over the pale features, so strongly as to be
visible even by the moon at a very short distance. Brushing away a tear
from each eye, as she held to her breast a little packet of some kind,
as soon as she found (as she imagined) the coast clear, she proceeded,
after fastening her door, toward one of the bowered footpaths leading
to the river. The concealed man looked after her, prepared to follow,
when some belated salmon fisher, his dark coracle, strapped to his back,
nodding over his head, appeared. This lurking personage was nicknamed
"Lewis the Spy" by the country people. He was the agent, newly
appointed, to inspect the condition of a once fine but most neglected
estate, which had recently come into possession of a "Nabob," as they
called him--a gentleman who had left Wales a boy, and was now on his
voyage home to take possession of a dilapidated mansion called Talylynn.
Lewis, his forerunner and plenipotentiary, was the dread and hate of the
alarmed tenants. He had already ejected from his stewardship a good but
rather indolent old man, John Bevan, who had grown old in the service of
the former "squire;" and besides kept watch over the doings on the farms
in an occult and treacherous manner, prowling round their "folds" by
dusk, and often listening to conversations by concealing himself. Such
was the man who now accosted the humble fisherman. Reverentially, as if
to the terrible landlord himself, the peasant bared his head to his
sullen representative.
"Who is that young woman?" he enquired, sternly, though well knowing who
she was.
"Dim Saesneg," answered the man, bowing.
"None of your Dim Saesneg to me, fellow," rejoined Lewis, sternly. "Did
not I hear you swearing in good English at a _Saesyn_ (Englishman or
Saxon) yesterday?"