PART V

I THE WHEEL 335

II ADIEU 347

THE INVITATION

"We'll take the little cable-tram, if you like, but it's not far to

walk--twenty minutes or so--the Trwyn's seven hundred feet high. You'll

see the whole of the town from the top. The sun will have made the grass

a little slippery, but there are paths everywhere; the sheep began them,

and then the visitors wore them bare. And we shall get the breeze....

* * * * *

"There you are: Llanyglo. You see it from up here almost as the gulls

and razorbills see it. The bay's a fine curve, isn't it?--rather like a

strongly blown kite-string; and the Promenade's nearly two miles long.

But as you see, the town doesn't go very far back. From the Imperial

there to the railway station and the gasometers at the back isn't much

more than half a mile; the town seems to press down to the front just as

the horses draw the bathing-vans down to the tide. Shall we sit down?

Here's a boulder. It's chipped all over with initials, of course; so are

the benches, and even the turf; but you'd wonder that there was a bit of

wood or stone or turf left at all if you saw the crowds that come here

when the Wakes are on. It's odd that you should never see anybody

actually cutting them. Some of them must have taken an hour or two with

a hammer and chisel, but I've been up here countless times and never

seen anybody at it yet.

"Yes, that's Llanyglo; but look at the mountains first. This isn't the

best time of the day for seeing them; the morning or the evening's the

best time; the sun isn't far enough round yet. But sometimes, when the

light's just right, they start out into folds and wrinkles almost as

quickly as you could snap your fingers--it's quite dramatic. Foels and

Moels and Pens and Mynedds, look--half the North Cambrian Range. You

couldn't have a better centre for motor-cycle and char-a-banc tours than

Llanyglo.... Then on the other side's the sea. That's only a tinny sort

of glitter just now, but you should see the moon rise over it. People

come out from the concerts on the pier-head just to have a look....

"The Pier looks tiny from up here? Yes, but it's three furlongs long for

all that, and those two tart-tin-looking things at the end hold nearly a

thousand people apiece. But, as you say, it is rather like one of those

children's toy railways they sell on the stalls in Gardd Street for

sixpence-halfpenny. And that always strikes me as rather a curious thing

about Llanyglo. It's a big place now--nine thousand winter population;

but somehow it has a smaller look than it had when it was just a score

of cottages, all put together not much bigger than the Kursaal Gardens

there. I don't know why the cottages should have seemed more in scale

with the mountains than all this, but they did. I suppose it was because

they didn't set up for anything, like the Kursaal and the Majestic and

the Imperial.... But it doesn't do to tell the Llanyglo folk that. They

look at it in quite another way. To them the sea and the mountains are

so many adjuncts, something they can turn into money by dipping people

at sixpence a time and motoring them round at four-and-sixpence the

tour.... And sometimes you can't help thinking that it wouldn't take

very much (a wind a bit stronger than usual or an extra heave of the

sea, say) and all these hundreds of thousands of pounds' worth of stone

and iron and paint and gilding would just disappear--be sponged out like

the castles and hoof-marks on the sands when the tide comes in--or like

a made-up face when you wipe the carmine and pencilling from it....

Eh?--No, I'm not saying they've spoiled the place--nor yet that they

haven't. You mustn't come here if you want a couple of miles of beach to

yourself. It all depends how you look at it. If Llanyglo's cheapjack in

one way, perhaps it isn't in another. It's merely that I remember it as

it used to be....

"Would it surprise you to learn that the whole place is only about

thirty years old? That's all. It grew like a mushroom; there are people

who were born here who don't know their way about their own town....

Mostly Welsh? Oh dear no, not by any means. I should say about

half-and-half. I suppose you're thinking of the Welsh names of the

streets? They don't mean very much. There's Gardd Street, for instance;

'gardd' is only the Welsh for 'garden,' and Edward Garden, John Willie

Garden's father, built the greater part of it (for that matter, he built

the greater part of Llanyglo). And if anybody called Wood (say) had put

up a house here, he'd probably have called it 'Ty Coed.' And some of it,

of course, is genuine Welsh. The Porth Neigr Road does go to Porth

Neigr, and Sarn, over there, has always been Sarn. But people think

they're getting better value for their money if they come away for a

fortnight and see foreign names everywhere; they've a travelled sort of

feeling; so they give the streets these names, and print all the

placards in two columns, with 'Rhybudd' on one side and 'Notice' on the

other.

"And that's given rise to one rather amusing little mistake. As you

know, this headland that we're on is called the Trwyn, and 'trwyn'

simply means a nose or a promontory. But over past the Lighthouse

there, there are the remains of an old Dinas, a British camp, and

half these Lancashire trippers think the headland's called after

that--'t'ruin'--'th' ruin'--you know how they talk....

"I'm interested in the place for several reasons (not money ones, I'm

sorry to say). For one thing, I like to watch the Welsh and Lancashire

folk together; that's been very amusing. And then, it's not often you

get the chance of seeing a whole development quite so concisely

epitomised as we've had it here. Llanyglo started from practically

nothing, and it's grown to this before John Willie Garden has a single

grey hair on his head (though, to be sure, that cowslip colour doesn't

show grey very much). Then there's that curious essence--I don't know

what you call it--the thing a town would still keep even though you

cleared every brick away and built it all over again, and sent every

inhabitant packing and re-peopled it. There's a field for speculation

there, too, though perhaps not a very profitable one. But most of all

I've been interested in seeing what various sets of people have given

Llanyglo, and what it's given to them in return--how the stones and the

people have taken colour from one another, if you understand me, and

what colour--in fact (if it doesn't sound a little pompous) in Llanyglo

as an expression of the life of our time. It's sometimes hard to believe

that something almost human hasn't got into its stone and paint and

mortar. The whole place, as it's spread out down there now--two-mile

line of front, houses, hotels, railway, gasometers and all--has had

almost a personal birth, and adolescence, and growing-pains, and sown

its wild oats, and has its things that it tells and its things that it

doesn't tell, in an extraordinary way--or else, as I say, it seems

extraordinary, because you get it all into a single focus. There may

even be a bit of me in Llanyglo. If you came half a dozen times there'd

be a bit of you too.

"I should like you to meet John Willie Garden. He's the man to go to if

you want to know anything about these streets and hotels and the seaside

and the stations on the front. Why not come to the Kursaal, on the

Terrace, at about nine to-night?--Good. He's a capital chap; a Something

or other on the Manchester Chamber of Commerce, adopted Conservative

Free Trade candidate for his division (but a Protectionist in other

countries) and probably worth a quarter of a million, a good deal of it

out of Llanyglo. Not bad for a little turned forty, eh? He'll probably

ask you to dinner. You can't see his house from here; it stands back

from Gardd Street. It was the first house to go up in Llanyglo--no, I'm

forgetting. There was one before it--just one before it, not counting

the original cottages, of course....

"What do you say to a turn? We've time to have a look at the Dinas

before we go down....

"It's British, and the _Sixpenny Guide_ will tell you all that's known

about it--possibly more. Its foundations are said to have been sprinkled

with the blood of Merlin. What's left of it's certainly sprinkled with

these everlasting initials. The Trwyn Light's just behind, two reds and

a white, and they're experimenting with the Rocket Apparatus, but I

don't think that will come to much.--There's little Porth Neigr,

look--and that point thirty miles away's Abercelyn....

"Now the mountains are beginning to show; there they are--Delyn on the

left, then Moel Eryr, then Mynedd Mawr. That's Penyffestyn, with the

great cavity in his side, and his shadow's right across Bwlch.... Yes,

very fine, and a perfect evening for it. The posters at Euston don't

overstate it, do they? Of course, you've seen that very familiar one, of

a Welsh Giantess, shawl, apron, steeple hat and all the lot, holding a

view of Llanyglo in her arms? Pink hotels, indigo mountains and

chrome-yellow sands....

"There's the _Queen of the Waters_ coming in. If we wait a few minutes

longer we shall see the town light up. Yes, electricity; the

power-station was finished only last year; it's over there beyond the

filter-beds; Llanyglo handles its own sewage.... Ah! There goes the

Promenade lights; three jumps, and the two miles are lighted up from end

to end; the kite-string's a necklace now; pretty, isn't it?... And there

goes the Pier.... There'll be a glare behind us like a shout of light in

a moment--the Trwyn Light....

"The mountains are dark now, but how the day lingers on the sea!

To-night it's like ribbon-grass.... Hear the post-horns? Those are the

chars-a-bancs coming in. The last tripper's running for the station

now.... Now the light's dying on the sea; it's a new moon and a spring

tide. Two or three riding-lights only--I say, it's solemn out there....

But they'll be dining at the Majestic presently. That long golden haze

is Gardd Street, and that spangle at the end of it's the New Bazaar.

There goes the Big Wheel in the Kursaal Gardens, with its advertisement

on it. We might look in at the Dancing Hall to-night; that's rather a

sight. They have firework displays in the grounds, too, and last year

there was one out in the bay; they put bombs and flares and serpents on

rafts, and laid them from boats, like mines. That was in honour of the

Investiture of the Prince of Wales....

"We'd better take the tram down, I think; we might stumble and break our

necks....

"The other turnstile.--That kiosk place? That's the visitors' bureau.

They'll tell you quite a number of useful things there--cab fares,

porters' charges, time and tide tables, excursions and so on; but John

Willie Garden can tell you more interesting things than those. Don't

forget you're to meet him to-night....

"You're sure you can't dine with me? Very well. The Kursaal, then, on

the Terrace, at a quarter to nine...."

PART ONE

I

THE YEAR DOT

On a Friday afternoon in the June of the year 1880, a roomy old

shandrydan, midway between a trap and a wagonette, moved slowly along

the Porth Neigr and Llanyglo road. It had been built as a pair-horse

vehicle for Squire Wynne, of Plas Neigr, but the door at the back of it

now bore the words, "Royal Hotel, Porth Neigr," and its present or some

intermediate owner had converted it to the use of a single horse. The

shaky-kneed old brown animal at present between the shafts might have

had a spirit-level inside him, so unerringly did he become aware when

the road departed by as much as a fraction from the true horizontal.

Taking the good with the bad, he was doing a fair five miles an hour. At

each of its revolutions the off hind-wheel gave a dry squeak like a pair

of boots that has not been paid for.

The day was warm, and hay was cutting. Combings of hay striped the

hedges where the carts had passed, and as the Royal Hotel conveyance was

so wide that it had to draw in in order to allow anything else to pass

it, wisps had lodged also in the cords of the great pile of boxes and

brown tin trunks that occupied the forward part of it. Honeysuckle

tangled the hedge-tops; the wild roses were out below; and in the

ditches the paler scabious was of the colour of the sky, the deeper

that of the mountains towards which the old horse lazily clop-clopped.

The pile of trunks in front hid the driver and the two print-skirted and

black-jacketed young women who sat beside him from those inside the

vehicle. These two young women were two of Mrs. Garden's domestics, and

they travelled far more comfortably than did their mistress. Packed up

by her bustle behind, on her right by her seven-years-old daughter who

slept with her head on her shoulders, on her left by the angle of the

trap, and in front by the hamper, the three or four straw basses, the

cardboard boxes, the hold-all of sticks and umbrellas, with a

travelling-rug thrown in (all of which articles she strove to balance on

her short, steep lap), she could only perspire. Her husband, who sat

opposite, could see no more of her than the top of her hen's-tail,

lavender bonnet. Even this he shut out when he took up, now his

newspaper (every line of which he had read twice), and now his

daughter's _Little Folks_ (for the inspection of which periodical,

though the print was much bigger than that of the newspaper, he put on

his gold-rimmed glasses). The smell of his excellent cigar mingled with

the scents of the roses and hay, and trailed like an invisible wake a

hundred yards behind.

John Willie Garden, who was eleven, had travelled half the distance from

Porth Neigr on the step of the trap. During the rest of the time, now

falling behind and now running on ahead, now up a campion-grown bank and

again lying down flat to drink at a brook, he had covered as much

distance as a dog that is taken out for a walk. He wore a navy blue

jersey, which, when peeled off over his head, had the double effect of

wiping his short nose and causing his shock of gilded hair to stand up

like flames, all in one movement. He carried a catapult in one hand.

Both pockets of his moleskin knickers bulged with ammunition for this

engine. In the heat of a catapult action, against hens or windows, he

used his mouth as a magazine, discharging and loading again with great

dexterity.--But, a mile or so back, his father, looking up over his

paper, had called the Cease Firing. John Willie now plipped the catapult

furtively, and without pebble. It was the chief drawback of the holiday

from his point of view that it had to be taken in the company of his

father. Among his brighter hopes was that Mr. Garden, having seen them

installed, would return to Manchester on the Monday.

Mr. Garden was head of the firm of Garden, Scharf and Garden, spinners,

and, to judge from his attire, he might have stepped straight from the

exchange. His square-crowned billycock hat, buttoned-up pepper-and-salt

grey suit, and crossover bird's-eye tie with the pebble pin in it, were

at odds with the slumbrous lanes and the scabious-blue mountains. He

carried a wooden-sticked, horn-handled umbrella, wrapped in a protecting

sheath, and from his heavy gold watch-chain depended a cluster of little

silver emblems that he would not have exchanged for as many Balas

rubies. All Manchester knew that he could have given up the dogcart in

which he drove daily to business, and set up a carriage and a pair of

horses in its stead, any day it had pleased him; and his opinions and

judgments, when he saw fit to utter them, were quoted. But he rarely

uttered them. When asked for his advice, say upon a letter, he would

adjust his glasses, read the letter slowly through, turn back and read

it all over again more slowly still, and then, when the person in

difficulties was awaiting the weighty pronouncement, would look through

the letter rapidly a third time, and at last, glancing over the top of

his glasses, would mildly observe, "This seems to be a letter."

Sometimes he would come to the very verge of committing himself by

adding, "From So-and-So." The grey eyes that looked over those gold rims

were remarkable. They seemed to serve less as appreciative organs of

immediate vision than as passers-on of an infinite number of visual

data, which would be accepted or rejected or laid for the present aside

by some piece of mechanism hidden behind. He was forty-four, clean

shaven, save for a pair of small mutton-chop whiskers already turning

grey, darkish and rather delicate-looking, and only half the size of his

stout, blonde wife. As long as Free Trade remained untouched, he had no

politics, and he was an adherent of the lower forms of the Established

Church. He was taking this journey on his daughter Minetta's account,

who was not doing so well as she ought to be. He had bought a couple of

the Llanyglo cottages, and judged that by this time they must be ready

for occupation.

The mountains drew nearer, and other pale colours began to show through

the scabious blue. The pile of luggage continued to brush the hedges,

and the off wheel to creak. Minetta snored lightly as she slept, and the

black legs that issued from her pink check frock, trimmed with crimson

braid, swung slackly with every jolt of the cart. Mrs. Garden's face

glistened; Mr. Garden allowed _Little Folks_ to fall from his hand, and

dozed; John Willie sought birds' nests and rabbits; and the old horse

continued to change from lumpish trot to slow walk and from slow walk to

lumpish trot, as if he had had a spirit-level inside him.

After this fashion the Gardens jogged along the lanes where to-day the

summer dust never settles for touring-cars, motor-cycles and the

Llanyglo motor chars-a-bancs.

"John Willie!"

It was five o'clock, and they had arrived. Leaving the cluster of three

or four farms that formed the land-ward part of Llanyglo, they had

turned through a gateless gap in a thymy earth-wall, and all save Mrs.

Garden and Minetta had descended. The cart-track had become less and

less distinct, and had finally lost itself altogether in deep, sandy

drifts in which their approach made no noise. There was a fresher feel

in the air.

And then, through a V in the sandhills, the sea had appeared, and the

lazy crash of a breaker had been heard.

The irregular row of thatched cottages was set perhaps a hundred yards

back from high-water mark, and the intervening space was a waste of

sand, coarse tussocks, and the glaucous blue sea-holly. Half-overblown

rubbish strewed the beach--rusty tin pans and kettles, old kedge

anchors, corks, a mass of potato-parings in which three or four hens

scratched, and the skeletons of a couple of disused boats. The

half-dozen serviceable boats were gathered a couple of hundred yards

away about a short wooden jetty. A mile away in the other direction rose

the Trwyn, bronze with sunny heather and purple with airy shadow, with

the lighthouse and the Dinas on the top. A small herd of black cattle

had wandered slowly out to it, and was wandering slowly back again at

the edge of the tide.

"John Willie!"

The cottages were thatched and claywashed, and while some of them had a

couple of strides of garden in front, others rose from little taluses

of blown sand. Sand was everywhere. It lodged in the crevices, took the

paint off the doors, and had blunted the angles of posts and palings

until they were as smooth and rounded as the two or three ships'

figure-heads that stood within them. Grey old oars leaned up in corners;

umber nets, with cork floats like dangling fruit upon them, hung from

hooks in the walls; and the squat chimneys had flat stones on the tops

of them. The windows were provided with swing-back wooden shutters.

Between the farming part and the fishing part of Llanyglo the family had

passed three chapels.

"John Willie!"

Mrs. Garden had descended, and stood over her neat boot-tops in sand,

wondering which of her cramped members it would be best to try to

straighten first. Standing by her only half awake, Minetta rubbed her

eyes. At a respectful distance, but a convenient nearness, half a dozen

barefooted children described as it were rainbow-curves in the air with

their hands from the foreheads downwards, and a little further away the

maritime population of Llanyglo watched the Royal Hotel driver struggle

with the luggage. They did not stand off from hostility, but from an

excess of delicacy. Then, as a heavy trunk slipped and stuck, a young

man with braces over his gansey gave a quick smile, started forward, and

bore a hand.

"John--Willie!"

It was Mr. Garden who called. He had put his key into the door of the

cottage where the house-leek grew like a turkey's neck on the claywashed

gate-post, and he wanted John Willie to help carry in the smaller

parcels. Now John Willie was neither deaf, nor did he feign deafness,

but he had a fine sense of the defensive uses of stupidity. Question

him directly (say about those apples or that broken window-pane), and he

knew nothing whatever. Question him further, and he knew less than

nothing. You might conceivably have questioned him to the extreme point

when his unadmitting blue eyes would have said, as plain as speech,

"What is an apple?" His primrose head could be seen at this moment fifty

yards away down the beach. He was watching a fisherman scrape hooks with

an old clasp-knife. He had just spoken to the man. "_Dim Saesneg_," the

man had replied. John Willie was now watching him, not as a man who

scraped hooks, but as the possessor of a new and admirable defence

against questions.

"John Wil----"

But this time the summons was broken in two on Mr. Garden's lips. He had

opened the cottage door, and was looking mildly within.

The orders he had given for the preparation of the double cottage for

his wife and children had included the lining of the interior with

match-boarding, and he had understood that this had been finished a week

and more ago. It was a month since he had had the advice-note from the

timber merchant at Porth Neigr that the material had been delivered. And

so it had. There it was. There, too, were the walls. But the

matchboarding was not on the walls. It lay, tongued and grooved, with

the scantling for fixing it, just where the timber merchant's men had

deposited it--on the floor. It filled half the place. On the top of it,

still in the sacking in which they had been sewn, were the articles of

furniture that had been brought from Mr. Garden's Manchester attics and

lumber-rooms. The rest of the furniture he had taken over from the

previous tenants, whom some vicissitude of fortune had taken far away

to South Wales.

Mr. Garden removed his glasses, wiped them, replaced them, and then,

looking over the top of them, spoke:

"Where's Dafydd Dafis?" he said.

But a cry from his wife, who had come up behind him, interrupted him.

She fell back again, not mildly, but in consternation.

"Nay, nay, Edward!--I never----" she gasped.

"Where's Dafydd Dafis?" Mr. Garden asked again.

"Of all the sights! If it isn't enough to--I thought you told me----"

Mr. Garden blew his nose and slowly put his handkerchief away again.

"Does anybody know where Dafydd Dafis is?"

"--and us fit to drop for a cup of tea!" Mrs. Garden continued. "Up

since five this morning, and come all that way, and not so much as a

fire lighted nor a kettle on to boil----"

Mr. Garden was looking about him again, as if he would have said, "These

appear to be boards," when suddenly his wife broke energetically in.

"Well, it's no good standing looking at it; we must all turn to, that's

all.--Jane! Ellen!--Off with them jackets, and one of you make a fire

while the other unpacks the groceries. The tea and things are in that

box under the shawls--and to think we might have come in wet, and not

even a winter-hedge to dry our things on!--There's no wood, you say?

Wood enough, marry! I can see nothing else!--And the tea isn't there?

Then run out and buy a quarter of a pound to be going on with; I won't

have everything unpacked now, not in the middle of this joiner's

shop!--Tell her where the grocer's is, Edward----"

And she threw off her lavender dolman and bonnet, and bustled about,

like the capable creature she was, as ready to turn to as if she had

never had a day's help in her life.

A little girl stood at the door, still describing rainbows from her

forehead; but scarce had Ellen asked her where the grocer's was when

there came up at a half run Howell Gruffydd himself, the keeper of the

single shop of the place. He was in his shirt-sleeves, wore an old

bowler hat, and wiped his hands on the coarse, white apron about his

middle. Over his glasses Edward Garden watched his approach, but he did

not speak. It was not anger that kept him silent. Already he had

accepted _fait accompli_--or in this case _inaccompli_. Howell Gruffydd

broke into sunny smiles of welcome.

"How d'you do, Mr. Garden? So you have arrived? How d'you do, madam? How

d'you do, miss? You had a pless-sant journey?"

He beamed on each of them, and then beamed on them again.

"Do you know where Dafydd Dafis is?" Mr. Garden asked once more.

"Indeed I do not, Mr. Garden. Perhaps he maake fenss for Squire Wynne.

Perhaps he fiss."

Then Howell Gruffydd's eyes fell on the boards as if he had not noticed

them before. He gave a heartfelt "Aw-w-w!"

"It is not finiss! Dear me, dear me! Hwhat a pitt-ty!" Then he became

cheerfully explanatory. "That will be old Mrs. Pritchard--Dafydd Dafis

he that fond of her as if she wass his own fless and blood. She iss

nine-ty, and for two weeks they have prayers for her in the chap-pil,

and Doctor Williams, he come from Porth Neigr, and that is five

s'illing, but the pains in her body was soa bad she not know hwhat to

dooa!--And it was good fiss-ing these three weeks and more--and the man

who bring the boards, he say they well season, but it do them no harm to

wait a little while longer----"

Mr. Garden's eyes were still looking over his glasses.

"Then is he going to let them season for ever?" he said.

Howell Gruffydd smiled soothingly.--"Naw-w-w! Not for ev-er, Mr.

Garden!"

"It's a good job he hasn't got to get his living in Manchester," Mr.

Garden observed.

At that Howell Gruffydd clasped his hands, as if he congratulated

himself that an interesting rumour was confirmed.

"Indeed, now," he said, "they do say that the pip-ple there is not the

same as the pip-ple here!"

At this point Mrs. Garden's voice was raised. She was on her knees by

the boxes, and could not find the sugar for tea. At the word "tea,"

Howell Gruffydd broke out with eager hospitality.

"Indeed it is cup of tea I came about," he said. "I say to Mrs.

Gruffydd, 'They come all this way,' I say, 'and they will be want-ting

cup of tea whatever.' It is all ready ... Eesaac Oliver!"--he called

from the doorway--"run to your mother, and say we be there in one

minnit! And do not answer me in Welss when there are pip-ple who do not

understand it--where are your manners, indeed!" He turned to the

new-comers again. "You s'all have cup of tea whatever, Mrs. Garden--it

cost you noth-thing--and the young gentleman, he is down at the boats,

but Eesaac Oliver s'all fetch him--come on----"

Howell Gruffydd, the grocer, speaks rather better English to-day than

he spoke then, but there is no more quickness and keenness in his

black-lashed light-blue eyes, and no more persuasiveness in his purring

voice. To the half-unpacked boxes of provisions on the floor he did not

drop an eye. He led the way past half a dozen cottages to the little

shop with showcards and paper packages in the diminutive window. He

showed them in and round the counter, lifting the old curtain that shut

off the parlour from the public part of the shop. Blodwen, his wife, in

a clean apron that showed the knife-edged creases of its ironing, was

curtsying as if she did not know how to stop. The parlour communicated

with the inner side of the counter, and behind the counter, on the left,

was the window. Bottles and canisters stood on the shelves, and below

them were innumerable small drawers. The fire-place had a high

mantelpiece with countless china objects upon it, and a large dresser

with blue and white plates stood against the inner wall. Next to the

dresser was a tall clock, with a ship sailing round the world on the

dial. A gigantic black turnip of a kettle sent out a cloud of steam;

cranpogs were keeping hot in a dish within the fender; and near them an

enormous marmalade-coloured cat slept. The room smelt of pepper and soap

and pickles and cheese, and Howell Gruffydd's guests filled it. He

helped his wife to wait upon them, and in the intervals attended to the

shop. A little girl came in for a pennyworth of bicarbonate of soda, and

Howell, returning from serving her, again showed his white, but false,

teeth.

"It maake the tea last longer," he said, with a jerk of his head; "but

there is no bi----" he smiled again apologetically, though he was

perfectly well able to pronounce the word, "--there is none of that in

this tea, Mrs. Garden. It is not tea like the fine pip-ple in

Manchester drink, but we are simple pip-ple here. Blodwen, the cranpogs;

make a good tea, Mr. Garden; indeed, you eat noth-thing; tut, tut, they

taake up no room!--You say what is that, young gentleman? That is a

Welss Bible. Aha, you cannot read that! Nor you cannot say,

'Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychyndrobwlantysiligogogoch!'--You try? I say

it slowly----"

Though Howell had repeated the jaw-breaker twenty times, John Willie

Garden would still have maintained the silence of defence.

"Ha, ha, ha! It is easy!... Well, I ask you riddle instead.--There

was a young gentleman, and he have eight"--he held up his

fingers--"eight--sisters. And every one of them has a brother. Now you

tell me how many brothers and sisters there are!" He winked, but

respectfully, at Mr. Garden.

"Nine," said John Willie Garden contemptuously, with his mouth full of

cranpogs and jam.

Howell showed no discomfiture. He laughed.

"Ha, ha, ha! He say nine! I ask him again.--There was a young

gentleman ... but, dear me, there is the s'op again! We must earn our

living, all of us. Business before pleas-sure--it is a good rule----"

And he squeezed through to the counter again, while his wife boiled more

eggs and spiked the cranpogs on a fork, five at a time.

After tea Mrs. Garden was seen to be pulling up her skirt and to be

feeling for her pocket in the folds of her petticoat; but with an

imperceptible gesture her husband restrained her. He thanked Gruffydds,

and they returned to their own cottage, Eesaac Oliver accompanying them

to help to pile up the matchboards and to take the furniture from its

sacking. The cottage was much like the other cottages of the place. Its

ceiling consisted of tacked-up sheets, inside which spiders and dust and

sand whispered and the wind rippled. The black mantelpiece had brass

candlesticks and china ornaments, and on one side of the tall clock was

a grocer's almanac-portrait of Mr. Gladstone, while on the other was one

of Dr. Rees, the President of the Congregational Union of England and

Wales. A sampler, rather difficult to see in the bad light, hung

immediately within the door, and the window opened six inches, in which

position it had to be propped with a short stick. There were geraniums

on its sill, and a red sausage filled with sand kept out the draught

when it was closed. The outer door of the second cottage was to be

permanently fastened up when the match-boarding should be finished. The

cottages adjoining belonged to fishermen, the one with a wife and

children, the other a widower who kept his departed wife in mind by

means of a number of framed and glazed cenotaphs, consisting of a black

ground with white angels mourning over a tombstone, and, above, the

words, "_Er Serchog Cof_----"

This was Llanyglo when Minetta Garden was first brought there for the

benefit of her health. The authors of the Itineraries had not thought it

worth mentioning; Wyndham has nothing to say about it, Skrine did not

visit it, Pennant passes it by. But you may find an excellent steel

engraving of it, by Copley Fielding, full of accomplishment, elegance

and taste, and published by the London Art Union. If Minetta did well

there, it was Edward Garden's intention, so far as Edward Garden's

intentions were ever known, to let or sell his cottage and to build a

more convenient house of his own. There was stone to be had in abundance

within three or four miles. Mutton was plentiful and delicious, beef

not quite so plentiful nor quite so good. The larger grocery supplies

could be sent direct from Manchester, the odds and ends purchased from

Howell Gruffydd. Water was to fetch only a hundred yards, and lamp oil,

etc., came twice a week in the cart from Porth Neigr. And soon--Edward

Garden did not know yet, and if he did not know you may be sure nobody

else did--Porth Neigr might be brought nearer to the rest of the world

than ten miles' journey by road. For, besides being a spinner and a good

many other things, Edward Garden was a Director of the Ratchet and

Rawtonstall Railway, and, as is the compliment between railway and

railway, those little silver trinkets that dangled from his gold

watch-chain--little greyhounds and locomotives, winged orbs and other

emblems of speed--were the tokens of his freedom at all times over other

lines, and of his personal intimacy with men who open up land, not a

field at a time with a plough, but by running a sinew of steel through

it, with a nerve alongside that, touched at any point, quickens and

thrills throughout its length.

Nevertheless, it is quite true that he came to Llanyglo first of all for

the benefit of his daughter's health.

II

ITS NONAGE

At bottom, neither the good fishing nor the illness of ancient Mrs.

Pritchard had been the real cause of Dafydd Dafis's procrastination in

the matter of the match-boarding--any more than those greased cartridges

were the real cause of the Mutiny. He was merely vindicating the claims

of a temperament that kept him, and would always keep him, poor, yet a

power. He was a day-labourer, whom anybody could hire to build a wall,

mend a thatch or caulk a boat; but--and this was the secret of his

influence--he had a harp in his cottage. In a glorious baritone voice he

sang _Mentra Gwen_, _Y Deryn Pur_, and lorn songs of love and wild

songs of battle. More than that, he sang _penillion_; and as

_penillion_--which is an extempore form of song into which you may

plunge at any point you please, provided you finish pat and triumphant

with the double bar--as _penillion_ concerns itself mainly with two

themes, namely, the loved mountains and lakes of Cambria, and quick and

topical inventions of personal gossip, Dafydd Dafis held his hearers

both by their deeper sentiments and their lighter foibles. He was a

spare and roughly clad man of thirty, unmarried, with a kindling eye, a

handsome nose, and a ragged dark moustache; and when his head was bowed

by the side of his harp, all the life of him seemed to run out into the

lean and roughened fingers on the strings.

He came to see Edward Garden about that match-boarding on the Saturday

morning, bringing a youth of eighteen with him. Edward Garden, who had

had experience of the Welsh in Liverpool, which is the capital of Wales,

received him with resignation. Fair and softly goes far in a day, and he

knew that the luxury of chiding the bard of Llanyglo would prove a dear

one did Mrs. Garden find her egg supply suddenly fail and the Llanyglo

cows mysteriously cease to yield milk.

His forbearance was rewarded. Before he departed for Manchester on the

Monday morning he had the satisfaction of seeing Dafydd Dafis and the

youth actually begin the job. No doubt it would be finished by the time

divinely appointed for its finishing.

But whether Dafydd Dafis sang much as he worked, or worked a little as

he sang, remained an open question.

Now in whatever other respects Llanyglo may have changed, its air then

was the same air that the Guide Book so justly praises to-day. Minetta

felt the benefit of it at once. During her illness she had had her dark

hair close-cropped; for fear of taking cold, she still wore a red

"pirate" cap, that is, a cone of knitted wool with a bob at the peak

that fell on one side of her head: and for the same reason she wore

black stockings pulled well up over the bamboo-like joints of her bony

knees. She was a slight, dark pixy of a child, on whom so much care had

been expended that she had begun to care for herself and to talk wisely

about draughts and wet feet; and sometimes she consoled herself for the

loss of her hair by repeating her mother's assurance, that it would grow

the more strongly afterwards.

But within a fortnight of the Gardens' settling at Llanyglo there was no

further thought of taking her back home until the cold weather should

come. Her doll's-house and paint-box were sent for. Her health

continued to improve. By and by she was to be found squatted down by the

sand-blown palings, surrounded by the Llanyglo children, keeping a shop,

of which the commodities were shells, pebbles, starfish and the like.

Her dolls and their house were neglected. But the other little girls,

who had seen these wonders once, sometimes lingered wistfully about Mrs.

Garden's door, looking within, and whispering, "There it is,

Gwladys--see, by the cloch----"

Long before the match-boarding of a single room was completed, John

Willie Garden, whom at first his mother had not been able to drive out

of doors, had lost interest in Dafydd Dafis, his sawing, his hammering,

and his songs. He disappeared by the half-day together. It was a holiday

time at the school by the Baptist Chapel, and, with Eesaac Oliver

Gruffydd and other youngsters as his companions, he scrambled among the

rocks at the base of the Trwyn, or climbed the headland itself, or

digged for bait, or went out in the boats, or fished for crabs with

split mussels off the jetty end (he stuffed his catch up underneath his

blue jersey, where the animals crawled about on his friendly and naked

skin). The rainbow curves of the children ceased when he or Minetta

appeared, but they continued as a salute to Mrs. Garden. The weather

continued superb: it rained scarcely at all. The mountains were never

for two hours the same; the sea in the evenings was mother-of-pearl; and

the rising moon seemed to stand up on it, like the lateen of a felucca

of gold.

Mrs. Garden sent to Manchester for her tricycle.

Then the school by the Baptist Chapel re-opened, and for some days John

Willie, hanging idly about and listening to the droning within, was

undecided whether to give the insulting cry of liberty or to lament

that he was left to his own devices. He himself would not have to go

back to school till the middle of September. Then he still further

enlarged his circle of acquaintance. He attached himself to a farmer's

lad, who shot rabbits of an evening among the sandhills, and, after

being allowed to fire the gun, gave his catapult away to a "kid." July

passed. The match-boarding progressed by fits and starts. It was now

Minetta who impeded its progress. Dafydd Dafis loved her as if she had

been his own child, and told her stories of dragons and knights and

enchantments and fairies, and sang _Mentra Gwen_ to her, all by the hour

together, careless whether Edward Garden paid him for those same hours

or not.

With the passing of August, Llanyglo had made far more difference to the

Gardens than the Gardens had to Llanyglo. Indeed, Llanyglo looked like

absorbing them altogether, as animals not ultimately capable of

domestication are sucked back into the feral state. In the matter of

dress, for example, they had deteriorated alarmingly. Half his days John

Willie spent in and out of the water without a stitch on him, and he no

longer had a pair of sand-shoes to his name.--And Minetta? First she

lost the bob from the peak of her red "pirate" cap, and then the cap

itself was cast aside. From careful nightly brushings of her "new"

pleated navy-blue frock with the white braid, she allowed the pleats to

get full of sand, and, where the prints of her ribbed soles had been,

now her bare feet patterned the beach. Her bamboo legs were brown as

seaweed and barked up the shins; and when (with a totally abandoned

display of knickers) she emptied her shoes of sand, she would sit down

in a pool as soon as not.--And Mrs. Garden? Not for worlds would she

have had anybody from Manchester see her as she returned on her tricycle

from bathing among the Trwyn rocks, sessile on the saddle, a mackintosh

over her voluminous bathing-dress, a towel cast across her shoulders,

and her plump ivory legs rising and falling on the pedals like the twin

cranks of a vertical human engine. Yes, the Gardens were slipping back

into savagery. They were becoming part of Llanyglo. Manchester seemed,

not so much a hundred miles, as a hundred years away.

And when, on a Monday morning, it became necessary that Mrs. Garden

should put on her garments of civilisation again and traverse those

hundred miles, or years, in order to see how her other home was getting

on, the whole population gathered about the Royal Hotel shandrydan that

came to take her to Porth Neigr, and tears stood in eyes, and sobs

choked throats, and shawls and hands and handkerchiefs were waved as the

vehicle started off over the muffling sandhills, and as many promises

were made that Minetta and John Willie should be well looked after as if

she had been departing never to return, instead of coming back again on

the Friday. Howell Gruffydd picked a tear from his eye with his little

finger, and spoke of the mutability of human affairs.

"The one is ta-a-ke, the other left," he said. "It is all change. Dear

dear, it make me think of my cousin Evan Evans, of Carnarvon, and his

three boys, as fine boys as ever you see, and so-a hap-py, all living

under one roof, till Mary Evans die and wass buried, and the changes

come, and where are those boys now? They are scatter. One is in Bangor,

and one is in Menai Bridge, and one is in Pwllheli. Dear me! Dear me!

Mrs. Garden was a very kind one. There was no kinder 'ooman. Al-ways

the sa-a-me. She seem like one of ourselves. Well, well----"

And he picked away another tear, as grief-stricken as if he had been

reciting an epitaph "_Er Serchog Cof Am Amelia Garden_."

Then, when on the Friday she duly returned, there was as much rejoicing

as if she had been a sister, come back again from a long wandering.

Mrs. Garden had brought back with her in the Royal Hotel conveyance

wellnigh as much luggage as had laden the vehicle on their first coming;

for it had been decided that Minetta's stay was to be still further

prolonged. So warm clothing had been brought, and more blankets, and a

screen for the door, and a small family medicine-chest, and Minetta's

Compendium Box of Games. And that was bad news for John Willie Garden,

for it brought the shadow of his own departure near; and yet it was good

news too, for it seemed to promise a more sure establishment in the

place, with perhaps another visit for himself during the Christmas

holidays. He could not think how the summer days had slipped away, and

grew doleful as he remembered how few of them now remained.

Then, when September was a week or so old, he climbed the Trwyn in order

to take his good-bye look at Llanyglo.

A straggling row of cottages, a few paths over the sandhills, three

Chapels, a school, and a few scattered farms: the rest, mountains, sea,

and air. The tide was creaming over the short thumb of a jetty, and the

herd of small black cows was patrolling the beach. Morgan's cottage,

Roberts's cottage, their own cottage, not more than a dozen other

cottages; and then Howell Gruffydd's shop: already the place was full of

memories for John Willie Garden. That wide pool in the sands that

reflected the sky had not been there a fortnight before--for the sea had

now lost its summer look, and it changed the configuration of the shore

at night. A puff of low-blown smoke showed where Dafydd Dafis was giving

a boat a coat of tar. There was the small crack of a gun--John Willie's

friend was shooting rabbits. On the top of Mrs. Roberts's chimney a new

flat stone had been placed, and a new staple for the shutter had been

driven into the wall. John Willie had still no stockings on, but he was

sensible now of the wind on his legs. They were as brown as rope. His

hands too were brown and grimy, and smelt pleasant. That morning he had

been helping the men to get in the winter peat....

So he watched, and at tea-time he descended; but already he was making

up the exultant tales he would tell the boys of his form, of the

spanking place where his father had taken a cottage and might presently

be building a house. He would boast over them in the Welsh words he had

learned, and triumph no end that they did not understand him. Only to a

few of his special friends would he confide the meanings of his

expressions in English.

Three days later he was doing even so, at Pannal School, near Harrogate,

in Yorkshire.

Mr. Garden came to Llanyglo once more, bringing a doctor with him this

time in order that Minetta's health might be authoritatively reported

upon, and again he departed. The cottages, which in summer had been

places to live outside of, began to have a comfortable look as the

afternoons drew in. Minetta wore her boots and stockings again now, and

her maroon serge frock with the white collar, and Mrs. Garden put her

tricycle away in the little lean-to behind the house, smothering the

bright parts with vaseline and covering it up with sacking. The

last--the very last--piece of match-board had been nailed in its place,

and all had been pale oak-varnished, so that the sheen of the fire could

be seen in the walls. The glowing peats were reflected too, in still red

spots, in the black glass rolling-pin, the brass candlesticks, the

windows of the dolls' house, the plates and lustre jugs, and the china

sitting hen where they kept the eggs. The wind began to hoot in the

throat of the chimney. Mrs. Garden's ears became accustomed to the

louder falling of the breakers; soon the cessation of this noise would

have been the arresting thing. October wore on. There was very little

fishing now. Each of the three Chapels had a week-night service, and

nearly everybody went to all three. Twice the schoolroom was thrown open

for concerts; but most of the singing took place in the kitchen.

Sometimes, on the edge of the dark, a fantastic irregular shape would be

seen, rising and dipping and lurching as it approached over the

sandhills; it was Dafydd Dafis, carrying on his back the wooden case

that contained his harp. Save for these infrequent diversions, the

winter was a dead time at Llanyglo. The hamlet rolled itself up and

hibernated. Mrs. Garden sometimes sighed for a Halle concert, or a

dance, or "a few friends in the evening," but she bore up for the sake

of the dry and sunny and exhilarating days and the good they did

Minetta. Minetta got out her dolls, their house, and the Compendium Box

of Games; and she and Gwladys Roberts and Morwenna Morgan and Mary

Price, with the oil lamp on the table and the firelight glowing low on

the ceiling, had spring-cleanings of the mimic dwelling (to which the

Welsh children did not take with any great heartiness), and epidemics

among the dolls (which were more interesting), and once a funeral (to

which they gave themselves rapturously). They played Snap and Fishponds,

and then Minetta set about the making of a picture screen, with coloured

figures which she cut from the _Queen_ and _Lady's Pictorial_ and plain

ones which she coloured with her paint-box.

At Christmas Mr. Garden and John Willie came down, the former for a few

days, John Willie for a fortnight. One of his days Mr. Garden spent in a

visit to Squire Wynne, who lived at the Plas, three miles away. The sea

was some days as black as iron, on others as white as ash with the

tumult of the wind. There was snow on the mountains, but little at

Llanyglo. Even John Willie did not want to bathe. In the daytime he

tried to rig up a sail on his mother's tricycle, so that he might coast

along the two miles of beach before the wind; at night he often walked

down to the edge of the dimly creaming water, and stood looking out into

the blackness, or else at the Trwyn Light, two reds and a white.

Squire Wynne, the former owner of the Royal Hotel shandrydan, was the

ground landlord of Llanyglo, and the reason of Edward Garden's Christmas

call on him was--still quite simply and on Minetta's account--that he

had decided to build and wanted certain land to build on. But this was

not quite the simple matter it might have appeared to be. With this,

that, and the other, the Squire floundered in a morass of mortgages,

and, for the scraping together of his interest money, could scarce have

re-papered the dilapidated walls of the Plas dining-room. He had other

property also, thirty miles down the coast, which he had never the heart

to go and see. It was there that the family fortunes had been sunk. A

score of broken shaft-chimneys and heaps of fallen masonry on a

promontory were all he had to show for the good Wynne money--these, and

a deed-box full of scrip and warrants which you could have had for the

price of the stamps on them. For that remote volcanic waste had been a

happy hunting-ground for the prospectus-monger with hopeful views on

paying quantities, and the Squire had granted more concessions than he

could count. It was to be presumed that somebody had made money out of

the concessions, if not out of the mines themselves. The last enterprise

had been manganese.

"Let me pour you out a glass of port first; it's the only thing I have

that hasn't some sort of a charge on it," said the Squire. He was a

heavy man of near sixty, the owner of a family pew in Porth Neigr

Church, a stickler for rainbowing, and, in a feckless sort of way,

something of an antiquary. His adherence to the three-bottle habit

helped to make the fortunes of several quacks in our own day, who

advertise infallible cures for the neuritis he and his kind have

bequeathed to their descendants. The only sign the Squire himself showed

of this was a slightly ochreous eye.--Then, when he had poured out the

port, "It's you who have the money nowadays," he said, meaning by "you"

Gladstonian Liberals. "Look at this ceiling of mine. There isn't a

ceiling in Wales with a finer coffering, but look at the state it's

in!--And that chandelier! It holds forty candles, but _I_ can't afford

'em! This is what _I_ use." He pointed to his father's old reservoir

colza lamp on the table.--"And I'll show you the staircase presently....

Sell? It won't make sixpence difference to me one way or the other.

Which piece is it you want?"

Mr. Garden told him.

"Well, you'd better see my man about it. Sheard, Porth Neigr, next to

the corn-chandler's shop. Or I'll see him if you like. But if we do come

to terms I should like to give you a piece of advice."

"What is that?" Edward Garden asked.

"I suppose you're not Welsh by any chance?"

"No."

"Well, I'm half Welsh, and things jog on well enough as long as I'm

alive. There are all sorts of questions that simply don't arise. But

they're a queer people here, and when you get to the bottom of it,

practically the question of landowning resolves itself into keeping on

the right side of Dafydd Dafis, if you see what I mean." It was not

necessary to tell Edward Garden that, but he begged the Squire to go on.

"For instance," the Squire continued, "I've a couple of mortgages

foreclosing any time now--Sheard will tell you--I don't even know who

the mortgagees are. But if they're Welsh, so much the better for them. I

mean if they introduce changes, or go at things like a bull at a gate,

they'll wish I'd gone on paying them interest. A smile does more than a

smack here. If they inclose, for example----"

"Ah, this new Act----"

"Or any other Act There was a case at that No Man's Land of mine over

there----" The Squire jerked his head in the direction of the shafts

where the family fortunes had been sunk. "An Englishman came, and began

to fence, and there was a Dafydd Dafis sort of fellow there, and this

man Rodgers thought that because he wore strings round the knees of his

corduroys he wasn't anybody of consequence ... and there you are. The

only thing Edward the First could do with the bards was to destroy

them, and they're the same breed yet.--So that's my advice. For the

rest, you'd better see Sheard. Have another glass of port."

And, after he had been shown the magnificent ruin of a staircase, and

had noted without showing the grass on the Squire's paths and the moss

in the Squire's grass, Edward Garden thanked the Squire for his advice

and took his leave. He was able to come to terms with Sheard, and in the

following spring a new house began to go up in Llanyglo.

The site Edward Garden had selected for his house lay a little way

behind the row of cottages, over the thatches of which it looked out to

the sea. Rock cropped up there, amid a waste of bents and potentilla and

sea-thrift and thyme, and a rill slipped over moss and, a little further

on, disappeared into the sand, to emerge again down by the shore. From a

stone quarry on the Porth Neigr road stone was still being got for the

extension of Porth Neigr itself; and it would actually be nearer to

bring it to Llanyglo. Sheard saw to that also, and Edward Garden, taking

the Squire's advice, put Dafydd Dafis, match-boarder, in charge of the

work. It would take time, but it would save time. And, so long as it was

understood that it was Dafydd Dafis who might say to this man "Come,"

and he came, and to the other "Go," and he went, Edward Garden did not

anticipate difficulties did he wish, later, to "stiffen" his supply of

labour by importing a plumber, or a mason, or a carpenter or two from

Manchester.

So, in the spring, the rock was cleared and chisels began to clink; and

John Willie Garden, away at school in Pannal, could scarce contain

himself until the summer holidays should come. He sent, by letter, the

most peremptory specifications. His room was to be thus and thus, and

not otherwise. The letters also contained complaints to his mother that

his health was seriously impaired by arduous study; so was the health of

his friend Percy Briggs: indeed, all the fellows were remarking how

greatly in need of a change of air he and Percy seemed. Mrs. Garden's

chief preoccupation was that the new house should have water upstairs

and a cupboard at every turn.

And as that was the first building of their own that the folk of

Llanyglo had ever seen, its progress became their daily talk. The

farmers came from inland to look at it, and, as the weather grew milder,

the fishermen no longer smoked of an evening under the shelter of their

boats down by the jetty, but instead made a kind of club-house of the

triangular pile of floor-boards that the Porth Neigr timber merchant

presently delivered. They climbed inside this slatted prism, hung the

interstices with sacking as a protection from the wind, and smoked and

talked, while the stars peeped down on them. They talked of progress and

innovation, and of how little they had ever thought they would live to

see such a change as this on the face of their sandhills.

"But it will not be as big as the Plas, whatever," one of them would

remark, not so much as belittling Edward Garden's new house as in order

to correct a certain tendency to wild and disproportionate talk. Indeed,

they were proud of Llanyglo's growth. Only the building of another

chapel could have made them prouder.

"Aw-w-w, William Morgan, h-what a way to talk!" another would reply.

"You talk like a great simpleton! You say next it is not so big as the

railway station at Porth Neigr! Indeed, the Plas is big-ger, but it is

di-lap-i-date, a pit-ty to see, and the staircase--aw-w-w dear! They do

say Squire Wynne he go in lit-tle bedroom, not to fall through the

floor!"

"And the stables is lock up, all but one stall, and you shan't find a

handful of corn there, no, not more than will feed one horse!"

"There was sixteen horses there----"

"And the Squire, he hunt----"

"It all go to that Abercelyn in the mines--thousands of pounds!----"

"There is land here to build stables if Mr. Garden wiss----"

"Indeed, Hugh Roberts, if he build any more we be bigger than Porth

Neigr, whatever!----"

And this hyperbole always raised a laugh. Porth Neigr, besides being the

head of the railway, had a market place, two banks, a stone quay, a

court house, and an English Church.

The house rose higher and higher, and by the time John Willie Garden

came again, in July, it had reached the first floor. Long rows of roof

slates were stacked under a temporary shed, and, as if he had not had

lessons enough in the school by the Baptist Chapel, Eesaac Oliver

Gruffydd did multiplication sums and Welsh-English exercises upon them.

John Willie's eyes danced when they saw the scaffolding and ladders. He

was six rungs up a ladder before you could have turned round. He was up

that ladder and down a second and up a third almost as quickly, nor did

he take breath until, short of swarming up the scaffold-poles, he had

stood on the topmost point of the structure. Then, with the air of

something accomplished, he condescended to the level ground again.

Half of Dafydd Dafis's men lodged at one or other of the farms and

cottages, to the tenants of which they were bound by ties of

consanguinity; the others put up at the little alehouse half a mile out

on the Porth Neigr road, which served also as a shop for the outlying

farms. Dafydd paid their wages, and they had built a hearth near the

mortar heap for the cooking of their dinners. John Willie dined daily

with them. Never was such importance as that with which he came nigh to

bursting. The rocks and the rabbits, the boats and the Trwyn, no longer

called him; here was not only a house going up, but his house. In his

father's absence he could give orders. He became knowing in limes and

mortars, expert in the use of the plumb and level. He strutted about

with a square, setting it carelessly against angles, and derided Eesaac

Oliver and his slates and long-division sums. The eaves-level was

reached; they began to get the roof-timbers up; the sandhills resounded

with hammering and sawing; and the upper part of the house began to

resemble a toast-rack against the sky. Only one stone remained to be set

in position. This was the gable-stone with "E. G., 1882" upon it. John

Willie warned Eesaac Oliver that the slates on which he ciphered would

soon be required.

As matters turned out, he was wrong in this. Already three men, a

plumber, his mate, and a carpenter, had been down from Manchester, and

fresh supplies of timber--sections of staircase and so on--had come in

carts over the sound-deadening sandhills. But how all at once the work

came to a sudden stop--how that toast-rack stood against the sky for

another year without a slate upon it--and how Edward Garden, away in

Manchester, had once more to accept the line of least resistance, while

his son loitered disconsolately about the unfinished building until

something even more exciting claimed his interest--to tell these things

another chapter had better be begun.

III

THE MINDER

The land on which, as Squire Wynne had told Edward Garden, other

mortgages were being foreclosed, began a furlong or so behind the

unfinished house, reaching to and including one of the farms--Fotty,

John Pritchard's. It formed a three-hundred-yards-wide strip of bents

and rough grazing, which spread out inland with Fotty in the middle of

its base. The mortgagee was Squire Wynne's Liverpool wine-merchant, and

he had accepted the mortgage partly because he did not wish to be at

cross-purposes with such of Squire Wynne's friends as were good

customers of his, and partly because he was not very likely to get

anything else in settlement of a longish account. This account had been

reckoned off the sum advanced, which, besides, was based on a low

valuation; and, not wanting the land himself, he was ready enough to

sell to any optimist who did.

The land remained in the possession of the wine-merchant for exactly

eleven weeks. At the end of that time he had found his optimist in the

person of Terry Armfield.

And who was Terry Armfield, that his affairs should thus become mixed up

with those of Llanyglo?

Well, the name of one of his grandfathers, which need not be mentioned,

is to be found, in certain circumstances of notoriety, in Gomer

Williams's _History of the Liverpool Privateers_; and that of his

father is associated with the bright story of the tea-clippers. Thus a

certain adventurousness in Terry may perhaps be accounted for. But

whence the rest of him derived was a mystery. Belated young Tractarians

who burn incense in their monastic bedrooms were no more common in

Liverpool then than they are to-day. In appearance, Terry was an

ill-adjusted compromise between an ascetic and a young man about town.

He was tall and of a buoyant movement, excellently dressed, had burning

and ecstatic brown eyes, and was possessed of an extraordinary power of

impressing people as long as, and even a little longer than, he was

actually in their presence. This was all very well as long as he spoke

only of pictures that this self-made merchant ought to buy, or of books

without which some shipper's newly formed library would be incomplete.

He really knew a little about these things, as also he did about

architecture and engravings, vestments and Ritualism and furniture. The

trouble began when he went beyond them. Wealthy business men, looking up

as Terry lounged into their offices, would put up their hands

defensively, cry, "It's no good, Terry--I won't listen," but would

presently find themselves listening none the less. It was not that Terry

was plausible. Plausible was not the word. He persuaded you only because

he was, for the time being, overwhelmingly persuaded himself. His

capacity for enthusiasm was astonishing. Circumstances having driven him

from his true vocation (the Church) into business, he traded as it were

under Letters of Marque that had had an apostolic blessing.

House-property, leases, patents, picture-exhibitions, concessions, bills

for discount, Irish-harvester agencies, philanthropy on a paying basis,

and a hundred even vaguer values--some idealistic strain in Terry so

moved the dullard-on-the-make that he had a new light on business as a

benison, and on money-making as something nobler than he had supposed.

What such an one commonly lacked, Terry was full and running over with;

and the end of the matter frequently was that it was judged to be worth

a certain amount of risk to be on the side of Terry and the angels.

Of course, Terry ought to have been locked up as a public danger.

Anybody but Terry would have been locked up. But you cannot lock

innocence and rapturous good faith up. Terry, if you had locked him up,

would merely have sent for his crucifix, plunged into fresh scheming,

and would have come out again as running over with piracies and the

humanities as ever.

So Terry Armfield, who hitherto had never heard of Llanyglo and of whom

Llanyglo had never heard, took over Fotty and the strip of land that ran

down to Edward Garden's unfinished house, with, as it happened,

extremely notable results.

For nobody who knew Terry ever supposed that he made purchases of real

estate solely upon his own account. He represented others; and it is

perhaps significant that the nickname by which he was known among the

members of the Syndicate which made use of him was borrowed from the

slang of the "swell mob." He was called "The Minder."

Now the Minder, as you ought not to know, is the gentleman who makes

himself charming to you while the others consult about how much you may

be worth, and how you may most conveniently be made worth less. Often,

like Terry, he himself is not in the real councils of his allies. They

want his looks, his candours, his repute, his address, and in Terry's

case they especially wanted his powers remarkable of persuasion. Until

it should be decided what people were to be persuaded of, Terry minded.

Little did John Pritchard, tenant-farmer of Fotty, dream of the

solicitude with which his farm was regarded by a number of people who

had never seen it and did not want ever to see it. Little did he think

that that middling oat-bearing land was being minded and brooded upon.

Little did he imagine what interest, what benevolence, what affectionate

regard ... or, to put it in plain English, he had no notion whatever

that, instead of having Squire Wynne for a landlord, he was now the

tenant of a set of prospectus-vendors of whom two or three were the same

men who had held those hopeful views on the paying-quantities of

manganese that could be obtained from that other property of Squire

Wynne's, the Abercelyn mines, thirty miles further down the coast.

The Corporation did not insist on manganese or on anything else. On the

contrary, it was accommodating in the extreme. You paid your money and

took your choice what commodity you found on its properties; you could

have had tin, iron, copper, lead, anything you happened to fancy. It

merely wished to be able to show, in case of need, its indefeasible

title to real land, at Llanyglo or anywhere else, but the further from

civilisation the better. It would be safer, and really not much dearer,

to buy Pritchard's farm, than it would be to have to confess in open

Court that the tin or iron or lead shares of which it was trying to

create the value, unfortunately happened to have Pritchard's farm

sitting on the top of them.

"No, we'd better get hold of a bit of real land from somewhere," the

Syndicate had said. "Better have it in a new name too. All Abercelyn

names exempt for three years. Who is there?... What about Armfield?"

All had agreed that Terry would make an excellent Minder.

When, in course of time, the Syndicate first heard from Terry (who heard

it goodness knows where) that "glo" was the Welsh word for "coal," it

was on the point of plumping for coal without further question.

"What more do you want?" it asked itself. "'Glo'--'coal'; there you are.

Place-name. Awful lot in a genuine place-name. Find it on an old map, to

show that we didn't invent it, and the whole thing settles itself.

There's bound to _be_ coal. Sure to be. They didn't call it that for

nothing. All ground's got _some_thing in it. _I_ say coal. On the face

of it. It seems to me Providential. (Shut up, Abercelyn; we're talking

about Llanyglo now.) ... Who says coal, then?" ...

But Llanyglo was not destined to be a colliery village. Latticed

shaft-heads were not to rise under the Trwyn, nor men to descend in

cages to the galleries deep under the sandhills. Edward Garden's house

was not to become a mine-manager's residence, nor a coal-quay to be

constructed where the wooden jetty stuck out like a stumpy thumb into

the sea.--Nevertheless, it almost looked at one time as if it might have

been so.

The Syndicate's registered offices were within a hundred yards of Lime

Street Station, and Terry, looking forth from an upper window, could see

the august portico of St. George's Hall and the cabs and steam-trams

running to and fro past it. He sat day by day at a high sloping desk,

perched on a tall stool. A small pile of letters lay by his side,

weighted with a surveyor's reel-tape, and on a shelf above the press

with the dumb-bell arm, thrust among directories and files, were _Stones

of Venice_ and _The Christian Year_. There was a green cardboard shade

on the double-elbowed gas-bracket, and on the wall near it hung an

ebony-edged T-square and a number of French curves. There was a second

stool for callers, and in a small outer office a youth of sixteen read

_The Boys of London and New York_ and chewed root-liquorice. The place

was shabby, as befitted a hole-in-corner enterprise, but Terry saw not

that shabbiness. He had splendour enough in his own visions. He did not

look very busy, but he was. A dozen inspired and half-baked schemes

fermented in his head, and besides these, he was minding Llanyglo--the

thyme and wild pansies and butterflies of its sandhills, the glaucous

blue sea-holly of its shore, its heathery Trwyn, its coal or what-not

underfoot, and its crystal air overhead--especially its crystal air

overhead....

IV

"DIM SAESNEG"

On the forenoon of that day on which work on Edward Garden's house

suddenly ceased, Dafydd Dafis, sitting astride of a coping, was singing

as he drove heavy cut nails into a beam. His song was martial, and it

almost made his joinering warlike. The burden of it was that Cambria's

foes (here a bang with the hammer) should fall beneath the sword

(another bang) as the pine falls when the levin (bang) flashes from the

cloud that hides the head of Arenig (bang, and a nail well home). John

Willie Garden, who had heard somewhere that coins of the current mintage

were placed in cavities in foundation stones, was chipping a hollow in

the bedding of the "E.G." stone for the reception of a well-brightened

sixpence and a document in his own handwriting, that should tell future

ages how one John Willie Garden had lived and had done thus and thus.

The sun was hot; the new timbers were as bright as John Willie's own

primrose-coloured hair against the intense blue; and the workmen below

seemed to stand on their shadows as lead soldiers stand on their little

bases of metal. John Willie finished his cavity, and then clambered up

to the ridge-tree. There, putting his hands behind his head, he lay on

his back, his dangling legs balancing him below. He blinked up at the

sky, and from time to time called across to Dafydd Dafis, "Peth a elwir

(whatever the English word might be) yn Cymraeg, Dafydd?" Then Dafydd

would give him the Welsh, and he would practise it softly.

It was just on the stroke of midday when Dafydd abruptly broke off his

singing in the middle of a word. John Willie, blinking up at the blue,

waited for him to resume; as he did not do so, John Willie turned his

head. Dafydd was looking away over the sandhills in the direction of

John Pritchard's farm.

John Willie sat up.

"Who is it?" he asked.

Dafydd continued to look under his hand.--"Indeed, it look like Mr.

Sheard," he muttered, "but he have strangers with him. It is Mr.

Sheard's carr-adge, whatever.... Hugh Roberts!" He called to the men

down below, who were making ready for their midday meal. He said

something in Welsh to them, and they too looked.

Mr. Sheard's governess-cart was drawn up by the earth-wall half a mile

away, and from it three figures had descended. They climbed over the

wall and began to cross the sandhills. One of them walked slowly and

somewhat after the manner of a clock-work toy, as if he was pacing a

distance; and another, after looking this way and that about him, moved

off to the right, apparently also pacing. He stopped and held up his

hand, and then returned, laying out along the ground as he went,

something that made a little glitter in the sun. They came together

again, and seemed to confer. Then over the earth-wall John Pritchard

climbed, and William Sheard went to meet him. After that they all

pointed, in various directions.

Dafydd Dafis, from the top of the pale yellow toast-rack, called

something else in Welsh, too quick for John Willie to hear. Then he

gazed again. Something else was coming along the Porth Neigr road.

Dafydd, who had the eyes of a river-poacher, knew both the cart and the

two men who rode on the load. It drew nearer. Sheard and the two men

seemed to be explaining something to John Pritchard. After a time John

Pritchard walked away.

Dafydd Dafis descended from the roof, followed by John Willie Garden. He

had put his hammer into his pocket; his little heap of cut nails

remained on the coping. The men had gathered into a cluster, but none

went over the sandhills to see what was happening.

Then a frequently repeated word struck John Willie's ear. He turned to

Dafydd Dafis.

"Peth a elwir 'adwydd' yn Saesneg, Dafydd?" he asked.

Dafydd Dafis looked as if he had never sung in his life.

"Post--hedgestake," he replied.

Slowly they got out their dinner.

As they did so Howell Gruffydd came up from the beach. Formerly, he had

rebuked Eesaac Oliver for speaking Welsh in the presence of those who

did not understand it; now, John Willie Garden's presence was entirely

disregarded. He did not understand six words of the low, rapid

conversation.

Then in the middle of it a light sound came over the sandhills, and the

talk suddenly ceased. They waited. The sound came again.

Hedgestakes were being flung from the cart down by the side of the road.

The workmen continued to sit after dinner, but not a ladder was mounted

again that day.

John Pritchard was big and sickly and consumptive, and his farm kitchen

was also the Llanyglo Post Office. There John Willie went at six

o'clock that evening to post a letter for his mother. Nominally, John's

mother, ancient Mrs. Pritchard, whom Dafydd Dafis so greatly loved, was

the postmistress, but actually Miss Nancy Pritchard, the schoolmistress,

did most of the work. She was sealing the letter-bag from a saucer of

melted wax when John Willie entered. The postman's cart waited at the

door, and beyond it, past the gate, could be seen the hedgestakes that

had been shot down on the opposite side of the road. The postman was

explaining something to John Pritchard, and Dafydd Dafis and his

labourers listened in silence. In her chair by the fire sat ancient Mrs.

Pritchard, seeming old as the Dinas itself, her face a skull with a

membrane stretched over it, a black gophered snood surrounding it, her

hands anatomies, and her mouth from time to time making a sort of weak

baa-ing.

Of the hushed and rapid conversation at the door, John Willie caught

this time a phrase or two he understood. "Wait and see, whatever," he

heard them say; "let them drive them in ... adwydd ... perhaps it be on

Thursday ... Saesneg...." He approached the group.

"Peth a elwir----" he began.

But the men who formerly had made much of him now took no notice of him

at all.

The next day two strangers from Porth Neigr appeared at Llanyglo, and

began to stake out and to enclose a belt of land that extended, roughly,

from the Porth Neigr road on both sides of John Pritchard's farm nearly

as far as Edward Garden's house. John Willie watched these two men at

work with their pawls, measuring and driving, but the curious thing was

that nobody else did so. Save for the Porth Neigr men, the blue and

sulphur butterflies and the rabbits, the sandhills were extraordinarily

deserted. John Willie wandered here and there in search of somebody to

talk to, and by and by found himself in Howell Gruffydd's shop. The

grocer showed his false teeth in a smile, and then continued to weigh

sugar.

"Well, John Willie Garden, can you say 'Llanfairpwllgwyngyll----' yet?"

he asked, his eyes gleaming as brightly as the bright scoop in his hand.

"Where's everybody?" John Willie demanded.

"You look for Eesaac Oliver?" Howell asked. "He go errand for me, to the

lighthouse. You meet him coming back if you go."

"Where are all the men?" John Willie demanded again, and Howell made a

quick and mocking gesture.

"Indeed, one hide behind that cur-tain--quick, look see!... Ha, ha, ha!"

he laughed when John Willie involuntarily turned in the direction in

which he had pointed. "I cat-ss you that time, John Willie Garden! You

think there's a man behind that lit-tle cur-tain, hardly so big as my

apron! Your sister, she s'arper than that, whatever!... You go find

Eesaac Oliver. He fetch eggs from the lighthouse. Perhaps you meet all

the men there too----"

And that was as much as John Willie could get out of him.

It was plain that something extraordinary was toward. It was a habit of

John Willie Garden's to look in at Pritchard's farm of an evening, and

there to pass the news with John Pritchard and to watch his ancient

mother, bent doublefold over her Bible, running a rush-light along line

after line so close to the page that the book was scored across with

bars of smoky brown. He went as usual that evening. But he had hardly

opened the door when it was closed again upon him. "We go to bed," said

John Pritchard, and packed John Willie off without his customary "Nos

da."

But John Willie knew that they were not going to bed. The door had not

been closed so quickly but that he had seen a dozen men crowding the

kitchen, and Dafydd Dafis's eyes, hollower than ever in the light of the

candle that stood at his elbow, with a sentimental and knife-like gleam

in them as they turned.

The next morning, every stake that those two Porth Neigr men had driven

in had been uprooted again, and a board with "Rhybudd" on it lay down

the beach, already lapped by the rising tide.

* * * * *

It was once told to the writer of _The Visitors' Sixpenny Guide to

Llanyglo and Neighbourhood_--a young man with so little regard for his

bread and butter that he made a labour of love of a job that brought him

in exactly ten pounds--it was once told to this over-conscientious

author, by a man who had known Squire Wynne very well, that the Squire,

finding himself one day in Liverpool, and taking a walk to the docks

with an acquaintance in the Royal Engineers, pointed down the Mersey

past New Brighton, and said, "Do you know, I've sometimes had the idea

that if this country was ever invaded the enemy would come up

there?"--"But surely," exclaimed his friend, "it's a difficult piece of

navigation?"--"Yes," the Squire replied, "but half the pilots are

Welshmen."

No doubt the Squire said it without accepting too much responsibility

for it. No doubt, too, he would not have allowed anybody else to suggest

that Wales might slyly open a back-door into England. But that there was

something, much or little, in it, the famous Llanyglo Inclosures

Dispute, that now began, lasted off and on for three years, and then

came to an end in as fantastic a manner as you could conceive, seemed to

show.

For that dispute would not have been so obstinate and envenomed had it

been simply a question of grazing, turbary, and right-of-way. True,

there might still have been the fence-destruction and gate-burning that

presently filled John Willie Garden's heart with a fearful joy; but--and

this is what made the difference--Owen Glyndwr and his triumph over

Mortimer would not have been dragged in, nor Taliesin and his prophecy,

nor Howell Dda, nor Gruffydd ap Rhys, nor Llewelyn ap Iorwerth, nor a

hundred other grey and valiant and unforgotten ghosts of princes and

saints and bards whose names string (as it were) all Wales, from

Braich-y-Pwll to St. David's Head, making of it one Western Harp in

which the wind of sentiment is never still.

For these fences on the Llanyglo sandhills were not fences--they were

Saxon fences. They were not notice-boards and gates--they were the

insulting tokens of invasion and rapine and defeat. The Welshman says of

himself that he is able to keep only that which he has lost, and, in

Dafydd Dafis's view of it, at all events, not a piratical Liverpool

Syndicate, but a marauding Saesneg king had come again.

On the evening of the day on which those fences were laid flat again,

John Willie went once more to Pritchard's farm, and this time was not

refused admittance. Perhaps nobody either saw or heard him enter. As if

it had been put there for a signal, a single candle in a flat tin stick

stood among the geraniums in the little square window-recess, and, save

for a dull glow from the shell of peats on the hearth, that was the only

light in the room. Again seven or eight men were gathered there, some

sitting on the hard old horsehair sofa, two on the table, and others

crouched or standing in corners; and the candle-light rested here on a

bit of lustre-ware, there on a chair knob, and elsewhere on a cheekbone

or the knuckles of a hand. It barely reached Dafydd Dafis, who sat in

the farthest corner, with his cap on his head and his head resting

against a Post Office proclamation that hung on the wall. No sound could

be heard save the loud tock-tocking of the tall clock with the in-turned

scrolls on the top and the gilt pippin between them.

John Willie thought it would be more grown-up to accept their silence

and to share their motionlessness. He set his elbows on the dresser and

sank his neck between his shoulders. The shadow of great John Pritchard,

who sat on the sofa's end, covered John Willie and half the wall behind

him as well, and John Willie's eyes only discovered Dafydd Dafis in the

farther corner when Dafydd moved. As he moved, a bit of gilt fluting

dipped forward out of the gloom of the chimney-corner. Dafydd had his

harp.

The next moment a single thrumming note had broken out. It was followed

by a soft chord of three or four more....

"_Mae hen wlad fy Nhadau yn anwyl i mi,

Gwlad beirdd a chantorion, enwogion o fri_----"

It is the commonest air you will hear in Wales--_Land of my Fathers_.

Quarrymen sing it as they work by their trucks, slate-splitters whistle

it as they tap in their wedges, farmers' lads tss-tss it between their

teeth as they clump along the road, sitting sideways on their horses.

You would think it had died an age ago of familiarity and repetition.

Had it been _God Save the King_, played at an English theatre, there

would have been a single line of it, half lost in the reaching for

shawls and cloaks and fans, and here and there a man would have stood

with an interval of an inch between his hat and his head, and already

the attendants would have been getting out the sheeting for the

stalls--so long is it since we knew adversity. But here, it needed but a

stake driven into a foreshore that would hardly have pastured a donkey,

and that was enough--so much adversity have they seen.... Then, as John

Willie craned his neck, a man moved from in front of the candle among

the geraniums, and Dafydd Dafis's hands could be seen. They seemed not

so much hands as multiple things, assemblies of members each one of

which was possessed of an independent life and will. There was not a

finger that did not lurk, stiffen, clutch, and then start back from the

throbbing string as if each note had been a poignant deed done, an old

and secret vow redeemed. For the images that were evoked were cruel

images. Those fingers of Dafydd's might have been choosing, not among

strings of wire and gut, but among the living nerves of an enemy whose

moans of suffering were transmuted into music. Know, that this--not the

languid wrist nor the caressing hand, not the swans-neck forearm nor the

coquetry of the foot on the pedal--not these, but the hook, the claw,

the distortion, and the wreaking and the more than human and yet somehow

less than human love--this is the harping of Wales....

"_Gwlad! Gwlad!_----"

Dafydd's head against the Post Office notice did not move, but his

twisted hand might have wrenched the sinews from their shoulder-blade of

a frame----

"_Pleidiol wyf i'm Gwlad!_----"

He did not sing the words, but the words that sang themselves in the ear

of every man there meant that he was so enwrapped in his country that an

alien stake in her soil was a stake in his heart also....

Within a week of that harping of _Hen Wlad_, Terry Armfield had more to

mind than he had ever reckoned for.

There was no doubt that the flame was fanned largely by the Chapels.

These were, respectively, of the three denominations most common in

Wales, namely, Baptist, Calvinistic Methodist, and Independent; and

Terry Armfield, coming down presently to see for himself what all the

trouble was about, gave one affrighted look at their architecture,

gasped, "Shade of Pugin!" and fled. The Baptist Chapel was a plain

slate-roofed Noah's Ark of stone that, with the day-school adjoining it,

stood alone in the middle of the sandhills. At one end of its roof-ridge

was a small structure in which a bell swung, and the building had this

further peculiarity, that, good stone being cheaper at Llanyglo than

common bricks, the latter material had been used wherever an

embellishment had been desired. The Independent Chapel was also of

stone, with zinc ventilators like those of a weaving-shed; these looked

over the fishermen's cottages out to sea not far from Edward Garden's

house. And the third Chapel, that of the Methodists, of which body

Howell Gruffydd was the principal pillar, lay behind the farms. It was

of corrugated iron and wood, painted inside with a skirting of chocolate

brown and upper walls of a peculiarly sickly light blue. On the walls

were stencilled ribbons with V-shaped ends, and these bore texts in

Welsh. Architecturally all these were hideous, but, to those whose

grandfathers had worshipped in the fields and in clefts of the barren

mountains and on the wide seashore, they had the beauty of a thing that

has been ardently desired, and long suffered for, and passionately

loved.

For from these three Chapels came not only the impulse of the spiritual

life of Llanyglo, but its local politics of dissent also. Education, the

Poor Law, matters of Local Government, Temperance, Tenure, the

Eisteddfod, and the nursing of Nationalism--if these things were not

actually Llanyglo's religion, they were hardly divisible from it. And

this welding of Faith with secular works was helped by two other

circumstances. The first circumstance was that no language was heard in

the chapels but Welsh; and the second was that, as a result of the

local-preacher system, three times out of four the Welsh issued from the

same mouths--from Howell Gruffydd's mouth at the Methodist Chapel, from

big John Pritchard at the Baptists', and from Owen Morgan's among the

Independents. None of these went quite so far as openly to incite to the

destruction of fences.

They merely prayed to be delivered from the situation in which they

found themselves.

Whereupon, like Drake's men, heartened by prayer, they rose from their

knees again to take another pull on the rope.

So three times in six weeks those fences were set up and laid flat

again; and then it was that Terry Armfield came down, saw the Chapels

(as above mentioned), gasped "Shade of Pugin!" and straightway sought

Squire Wynne.

But before ever he set eyes on the Squire he had already almost

forgotten the errand that had brought him. As the servant showed him to

the dining-room he saw that noble ruin of a staircase, and his eyes

became illumined. Then, in the dining-room, those same eyes rested on

the coffered ceiling and the portraits and the wide mullioned lattice.

By the time the Squire entered he was adoring the stately stone

fireplace. He swung round, hearing the Squire's step.

"Magnificent, magnificent!" he cried. "Show me over the house--I beg you

to show me over the house!----"

The Squire, who had had this kind of visitor before (though none with

quite that perilous smoulder in his eye that Terry had) naturally

concluded that a fellow-antiquary, finding himself in the neighbourhood,

had permitted himself to beg for a sight of the faded glories of the

Plas.

"I'll show you over part of the house with pleasure," said the Squire;

and he did so.

"Magnificent!" Terry cried again, when they were once more back in the

dining-room. "And oh, that rood-screen--early sixteenth--and those

sedilia--in your Church over there! I spent an hour there as I came

along."

"Oh, you came Porth Neigr way, did you?" said the Squire.

As if he had previously written the Squire a letter setting forth his

business in detail, which therefore he need not repeat, Terry leaped

light-heartedly ahead.

"Yes, sir--and then, after that, to come upon those incredible Chapels!

(That's a misnomer, by the way, unless they contain relics.) ... Of

course, after that I'm not surprised at anything these people do--fences

or anything else----"

The Squire was reaching port from the sideboard.--"Eh?" he said, not

quite understanding.

"_Those_ places an expression of religious emotion!" Terry cried,

throwing up his hands. "Of course, what's happened was a perfectly

natural result! Commit such an outrage on the aesthetic sense as that

and--and _no_ fence is safe! If I'd seen those Chapels first I'd as soon

have bought a volcano as that land! They ought to have been mentioned by

the vendors--flagrant _suppressio veri_--deliberate concealment of a

material fact--an action ought to lie--by Jove, I've a good mind to take

advice about it!----"

"I beg your pardon?" said the puzzled Squire.

A very few questions served to enlighten him. His mouth twitched as he

filled his harebrained visitor's glass.

"Well," he said, "I don't quite follow your processes, but your result

seems all right. If you mean there's some connection between the Chapels

and your fences being pulled down, I dare say you're not very far wrong.

The places of worship do settle a good many things indirectly here. But

our own Establishment's been called a branch of the Civil Service, so I

don't see how we can complain if some of their activities are a little

secular too."

"'A little secular!'" echoed Terry. "Pulling down fences 'a little

secular!' ... Now I'm anxious not to go to extreme lengths----"

"Eh?" said the Squire rather quickly. He gave Terry a longish look....

"Do you know Wales?" he asked politely.

"I do not. But I've not heard that it's outside the Law. I was going to

say, that I don't want to issue summonses if it can be avoided----"

Thereupon the Squire, who was inclined to like this half-mystical zany

of a guest, gave him the same advice he had given to Edward Garden.

"Oh, avoid it if you possibly can!" he said good-humouredly. "There's

nothing these people won't do for you if you go the right way about it,

but it must be the right way. A new neighbour of yours seems to be

getting along with them quite successfully, a man called Garden. Quite

an opportunist, I should say--takes things just as he finds

them--settles every question strictly on its merits and has a good deal

of audacity up his sleeve for use at the right moment, I don't doubt.

Can't you take a leaf out of his book?"

"Do they pull down his fences?" Terry demanded over his shoulder; he had

been looking at that marvellous fireplace again.

"I don't think so. As a matter of fact they're building his house for

him.--By the way--Sheard's told me very little about it--have you bought

your land to build on?"

Terry, remembering his Syndicate, had a momentary check.--"I don't know

yet," he confessed.

"Because if you have," the Squire continued, "and find them

employment--spend money in the place--and use a certain amount of

tact--you might hit it off with them. But do try to overlook their

Chapels. A soul's sometimes saved under a tin roof, you know."

Terry looked as if he would far rather have his soul damned under a

Gothic nave.--"That's simply buying 'em off," he said. He would have

preferred to burn them, each at one of the stakes they had uprooted.

"Well.... I'm afraid it's all the advice I can give you.--And now I

shall have to ask you to excuse me. I'll show you a rather fine carved

kingpost before you go if you like----"

And Terry presently departed for Porth Neigr again, where he took the

taste of the Chapels out of his mouth in a further ecstatic

contemplation of the early sixteenth-century rood-screen.

The fences were set up again.

John Willie Garden could never be sufficiently grateful to his stars

that what happened next came before he departed for school again. He had

gone to bed that night, but was lying awake, thinking of the suspended

building. He knew that the resumption of that building was not

irremediably involved in the fencing dispute; Edward Garden had

established a serviceable goodwill in Llanyglo; and that very night,

standing by Pritchard's manure-heap, Dafydd Dafis had all but told John

Willie that when Llanyglo had settled with the intruder it would have

time to spare for the child of its adoption again. He had told him this,

and had then ruffled up John Willie's fair hair with his hand and had

added that it was ten o'clock and time he was in bed.

His little window, as well as that of the next room, where his mother

slept, overlooked the sandhills, and John Willie, lying awake, did not

at first notice the change in its colour. Neither did his ears hear at

first a low muffled cracking that had been going on for some time. But

suddenly he sat up. The muslin curtains and the claywashed embrasure of

the window had a rusty glow, which reached the counterpane of the bed in

which John Willie lay.

The moment he saw this John Willie was out of bed. Then, within thirty

seconds, he had plunged into his jersey, tucked his nightgown hastily

into his knickers, and, making as little noise as possible, had tiptoed

down the stairs and out of the cottage.

The bright glow over the sandhills guided him, and he ran as fast as he

could through the muffling sand. The continuous cracks were like

pistols, and a deep roaring could be heard, which became louder. Then,

mounting a hillock, John Willie saw the beautiful blaze. It was as high

as a cottage, and the twisting, upstreaming column of sparks above it

rose fifty feet into the night. It illumined the sandhills far and wide.

The Baptist Chapel and schoolhouse looked as if they were cut out of red

cardboard against the night. Even the zinc ventilators of the

Independent Chapel, down by the sea, showed faintly. Then all became

grey again as a dozen fresh stakes were piled on. By the time John

Willie Garden got there these too had caught, with volleys of cracks.

Every man in Llanyglo was there, and, farther off, groups of women also.

The heat was intense, so that the men and lads who ran in to throw back

half-consumed ends did so with their faces averted.

"Why didn't you tell me?" said John Willie to Dafydd Dafis

reproachfully.

Dafydd was watching this beautiful Red Dragon of a flame that was

burning Saxon stakes. His eyes blinked rapidly. Then he leant over John

Willie, and his forefinger tapped two or three times on the boy's heart.

"You wass tell me you go to bed," he whispered. "You wass tell me that,

at ten o'clock, at John Pritchard's. There iss two men over there----"

suddenly he straightened himself again and pointed, "--you can tell them

the same whatever."

A hundred and fifty yards away two men watched. They were the men from

Porth Neigr who had set up the fences. They put up at a wayside cottage

two miles away, and probably they were not surprised at what was

happening. They did not approach any nearer.

Then there was a call of "John Willie!" and Mrs. Garden's terrified face

could be seen in the outer ring of light. John Willie was haled off, in

a rage that was nearer to tears than he would have admitted.

Four days later summonses were served on Dafydd Dafis and two other men.

The serving of those summonses had an instant and very remarkable

effect. This effect was, that three of the inhabitants of Llanyglo

straightway lost all recollection of the English language. And not only

did they, the summoned ones, lose it, but every witness called from

Llanyglo fell into an ignorance as blank. This happened at Sessions,

before Squire Wynne himself, who, in the days before this visitation of

forgetfulness, had talked English to all of them. The gloomy

magistrates' Court opposite Porth Neigr railway station was crowded.

Terry Armfield, at whose instance the summonses had been issued, thought

he had never seen such a set of pigjobbers as stood against the

perspiring walls or sat with their chins on their outspread forearms,

their caps in their hands or in the pockets of their corduroys. The two

men who had put up the fences sat in the well of the Court. They were

brothers, and their name was Kerr. The skylight shone on the baldish

head of the elder of them, and both had given their evidence in a strong

Lancashire accent. They had been watching on the sandhills, they said,

expecting something of the sort, and knew that it had taken place at

exactly ten o'clock, because they had both looked at their watches....

So "Dim Saesneg," said man after man; and the Squire could only make

dots with his pen on the blotting-paper before him, keep his eyes from

Terry Armfield, and call for an interpreter.

Now interpretation takes time, during which time the person with most

to gain can be thinking of the tale he will tell next. So the

prosecuting solicitor stood up before Dafydd Dafis, and this kind of

thing began:

"Were you on this land at ten o'clock that night?"

("_Oeddych chi ar y tir yma am ddeg o'r gloch y noson hono, Dafydd

Dafis?_" This from the interpreter.)

A rapid denial from Dafydd, not a hair of his shaggy moustache moving.

"Ask him where he was."

"_Lle r'oeddych chi, Dafydd Dafis?_"

The harpist, his fingers twisting his cap, answered that he had been at

Pritchard's farm, and this also was translated.

"Have you any witnesses?"

("_Oes genych chi dystion, Dafydd Dafis?_")

"Eh?"

"_Oes genych chi dystion?_"

"_R'oeddwn efo John Willie Garden._"

("He says he can call the son of the man who is building a house there,

sir.") ...

And so it went on, hour after hour, with the English evidence likewise

translated for the benefit of the defendants. At the end of the first

day the case was adjourned, but it came on again on the morrow, and

again on the day after that. It began to dam all other business. As a

block in traffic causes an accumulation behind, so other cases began to

collect--drunks, dog-licences, drivings without lights, and innumerable

other petty disputes. There was no question that the fences had been

burned; the only question was whether they had got hold of the right

men. The Bench could not understand the obstinacy with which the two

Lancashire witnesses persisted that the outrage had occurred at exactly

ten o'clock.

"But mightn't it have been half-past ten, or eleven, or even half-past

eleven?" they were asked again and again.

"Ah, it might," they admitted open-mindedly. "But it wasn't," they added

unshakably.

Dafydd Dafis wanted to know what they said.

"Oh, translate it," the Squire sighed, and for the fortieth time it was

translated.

"_R'oeddwn efo John Willie Garden_," said Dafydd once more....

And that was great glory for John Willie, for he was called, asked

whether he knew the nature of an oath, was sworn, and raised a general

laugh by varying the formula with which the Court was not so drearily

familiar, and saying, in Welsh, "_Dim Cymraeg._" He stood to it that at

ten o'clock Dafydd Dafis had been talking to him by Pritchard's

manure-heap.

"Oh, for God's sake settle it or do something!" the Squire said

impatiently to Terry Armfield, as he crossed the road to the Station

Hotel for lunch. "You can't say I didn't warn you."

"I doubt whether my own witnesses would let me now," Terry replied.

"They're as cranky in their way as your own Fenians. Besides, as I told

you, I'm acting for others."

"Well, if I bind 'em over they'll only do it again," sighed the Squire.

Terry himself began to weary. After all, he had other things to mind

than a piece of beggarly waste land dotted with Chapels that were a

blasphemy of the name of beauty.

As the Squire ate his chop in the coffee-room, the two witnesses from

Lancashire sat each on a tall stool in the sawdusted tap round the

corner. Thick imperial pint glasses of mild ale stood on the counter

before them. The elder and baldish one was a man of three or four and

forty, a hard, handy little man, with a curious dip and slope about his

right shoulder. This slight lopsidedness he had acquired during the

years in which he had wandered North Wales buying and felling alders for

clog-soles. Any time this last twenty years you might have come across

him in his little canvas hut in the middle of a wood, with a pile of

split alder-billets on one side of him which, plying his hinged knife on

its solid base with marvellous dexterity, he shaped roughly into the

clog-soles which he cast on a pile on his other side, while his brother

felled. He would buy all the alders in a wood, at so much a foot over

all; the rough-dressed soles went off to Manchester; and no doubt a good

many of them found their way into Edward Garden's spinning-sheds. In the

course of his travels he had picked up from the gentry and their

stewards volumes of gossip of families and their vicissitudes, of wills,

boundaries, timber-news, and customs and tenures rapidly becoming

obsolete; and his coat, a brown check with wide pockets, had probably

been made a dozen years before in Conduit Street. He wore a tie, but no

collar. As the Court had assumed on its own responsibility that he spoke

no Welsh, he had not considered it his business to correct the mistake,

but had allowed them to translate for him also--perhaps for reasons not

fundamentally different from those of Dafydd Dafis himself. He had half

a week's stubble on his chin and thin upper lip; he spat with great

accuracy; and he turned to humour things not generally accounted

humorous, such as scaffold accidents, fights, and deaths from dropsy.

His brother, save that he wore a collar and no tie, was a younger

edition of him.

They drank from the thick glasses in silence, and then the elder of them

drew out a short clay pipe with a dottle in the bottom of the bowl,

struck a match on the side of it, and lighted up. The dottle made a

noise like frying. His brother also drew out his pipe, a clay shaped

like a cowboy's head. He gave an indescribably short jerk of his head in

the direction of the other's waistcoat pocket, then, when the stub of

cake was thrown over to him, cut it with a knife with a curved blade. He

stuffed these brains of black tobacco into the cowboy's head, and made

another minute gesture. This was a request for a match. Then, bringing

out sixpence from his pocket, he knocked once with the heavy glass on

the counter.

"Two more cups o' tea," he said to the young woman who approached.

They smoked again in silence.

It was the elder brother who spoke first.

"I'm capped about them watches, an' right!" he mused.

The other took a pull at his beer, and replaced the cowboy pipe in his

mouth.

"I cannot think th' bairn wor telling 'em lies," the elder one mused

again.

"Gi'e me another match," said his brother.

The alder-buyer's wrinkled eyes were peering sideways at an auction

announcement pinned to the wall. He shifted his feet in the legs of the

tall stool. By and by he spoke again.

"Let's see. Let's study it out.... We com' home at tea-time that day,

didn't we?"

"Ay."

"Then we went out into th' yard and washed we'rsens at th' bucket."

"Ay."

A pause, and then, the speaker's eyes on his hearer's face like two

prickers:

"Did yet tak' your waistcoat off?"

"I cannot tell ye."

"I did mine. I threw it down on a chair i' t' kitchen."

This time the younger brother shifted his feet.

"Happen I did mine an' all."

"Wor your watch i' your pocket?"

"Ay, it wad be."

"So wor mine."

They drank thoughtfully and simultaneously, and again the silence fell.

Then, more slowly still, the elder Kerr resumed.

"D'ye remember a chap coming in, a thin chap, 'at spoke Welsh to t'

Missis?"

"Ay."

"He com' to fetch a pair o' boots to mend."

"Ay."

"Think ye----" again the look as of prickers, "--think ye there wor

owt?"

"How, owt?"

"'At he wanted to know what time it wor, or owt?"

"There wor t' clock."

"Ay...."

There were minutes of silence this time. Evidently the younger brother

occupied them by taking, in thought, a considerable journey. He spoke as

if in objection to some far-fetched surmise.

"But they'd ha' to be set forrard again," he grunted.

"Ay, I'm bothered wi' that," the elder admitted, "--wi'out t' Missis

herself----"

"Aw!... Think ye?..."

They knocked for two more cups of tea.

"And we've been swearing to ten o'clock."

"So ye think there wor summat?"

"I cannot think t' lad wor telling 'em lies," said the alder-buyer.

This time they both peered reflectively at the auction announcement on

the wall, smoking and spitting as they peered.

V

THE HAFOD UNOS

"Then," said Terry's Syndicate, or such of its members as lounged in

Terry's office, looking down on the Lime Street and St. George's Hall

pavements as if they had been so many fishermen selecting a likely spot

for the casting of a fly, "what about going back to the old idea--coal?"

"Hm!----" (a very dubious "Hm!").--"Far better have another shot at

manganese--especially after what's happened----"

What had happened had started remotely enough from Llanyglo. It had

started, to be exact, in the Balkans. Much manganese comes from the

Balkans; a war there had suddenly made the supply a mere trickle, so

that prices had whooped up; and--wonder of wonders--those old workings

of Squire Wynne's, farther along the coast, actually looked like paying.

Terry's Company, unhappily, had just transferred its rights, and was

rather sore about it.

"Wouldn't that be a little too--timely?" a timid member suggested.

"Not if you--er--put it properly. It's only thirty miles away----" The

speaker paused from delicacy. "From the real manganese" was understood.

"Might send a geologist down--one we could trust----"

A very young member of the Syndicate hazarded a remark.--"But wouldn't

burnt mine-works come dearer than burnt fences?"

They smiled indulgently at him. He was merely suffering from a slight

confusion of ideas. Nobody had said anything about mine-works. Then they

turned to Terry.

"What do you say, Armfield?" ...