Mushroom Town

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

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 ridg

d. John Willie, blinking up at the blue, waited for him to resume; as he did not do so, John Willie t

illie

it?" h

rangers with him. It is Mr. Sheard's carr-adge, whatever.... Hugh Roberts!" He called to the men down be

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

. 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

ammer into his pocket; his little heap of cut nails remained on the coping. The men ha

ord struck John Willie's ear

wydd' yn Saesneg,

d as if he had nev

estake," h

got out th

r speaking Welsh in the presence of those who did not understand it; now, John Willie Garden's p

e over the sandhills, and the talk suddenl

lung from the cart down

after dinner, but not a ladde

rd, 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 Jo

or two he understood. "Wait and see, whatever," he heard them say; "let them drive the

elwir--"

ad made much of him now to

n'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 sandhill

rpwllgwyngyll--' yet?" he asked, his eyes gleam

body?" John Wi

ed. "He go errand for me, to the lightho

llie demanded again, and Howell

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

h as John Willie co

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 we

he had seen a dozen men crowding the kitchen, and Dafydd Dafis's eyes, hollower than ever in the ligh

ad driven in had been uprooted again, and a board with "Rhybud

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 s

that Wales might slyly open a back-door into England. But that there was something, much or little, in it, the famous Llanyglo Inclosures Dis

n'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

e insulting tokens of invasion and rapine and defeat. The Welshman says of himself that he is able to keep only that which he has los

d, 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

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 discov

te had broken out. It was followed by

d fy Nhadau

chantorion, e

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

d! Gw

not move, but his twisted hand might have wrenche

wyf i'm

e ear of every man there meant that he was so enwrapped in his coun

n Wlad, Terry Armfield had more to

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 principa

lanyglo'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,

ivered from the situation in

by prayer, they rose from their knees

and then it was that Terry Armfield came down, saw the Chapels (as above

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 portr

ed. "Show me over the house-I beg

lder in his eye that Terry had) naturally concluded that a fellow-antiquary, finding himself i

the house with pleasure," sa

dining-room. "And oh, that rood-screen-early sixteenth-and those sedi

Neigr way, did you

etting forth his business in detail, which therefore

's a misnomer, by the way, unless they contain relics.) ... Of course, after

from the sideboard.-"Eh?" he

age on the ?sthetic 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 me

don?" said the

hten him. His mouth twitched as he f

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

ng down fences 'a little secular!' ... Now

. He gave Terry a longish look.... "

de the Law. I was going to say, that I don't

this half-mystical zany of a guest, gave him

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-se

manded over his shoulder; he had been lo

g his house for him.-By the way-Sheard's told me very

te, had a momentary check.-"I

n the place-and use a certain amount of tact-you might hit it off with them. But do

Gothic nave.-"That's simply buying 'em off," he said. He would have

nd now I shall have to ask you to excuse me. I'll show you

ook the taste of the Chapels out of his mouth in a further ecs

s were se

n 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

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 u

ad plunged into his jersey, tucked his nightgown hastily into his knickers, and, mak

ing 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

" said John Willie to Da

ing Saxon stakes. His eyes blinked rapidly. Then he leant over John Wi

n o'clock, at John Pritchard's. There iss two men over there--" suddenly he s

ho had set up the fences. They put up at a wayside cottage two miles away, and proba

face could be seen in the outer ring of light. John Willie was haled

s were served on Dafydd

orgetfulness, 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

ly make dots with his pen on the blotting-paper before him, k

o gain can be thinking of the tale he will tell next. So the prosecutin

s land at ten o'

g o'r gloch y noson hono, Dafydd

ydd, not a hair of his

m where

ych chi, Da

ap, answered that he had been at Pritch

u any wi

chi dystion,

E

ych chi

fo John Wil

on of the man who is buildi

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

ten, or eleven, or even half-past ele

d open-mindedly. "But it was

anted to know

ire sighed, and for the for

illie Garden," said

nd raised a general laugh by varying the formula with which the Court was not so drearily familiar, and saying, in Wel

id impatiently to Terry Armfield, as he crossed the road to t

ry replied. "They're as cranky in their way as your own

er they'll only do it a

ings to mind than a piece of beggarly waste land dotted

lit 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

ore a collar and no tie, wa

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 c

" he said to the young

ed again

der brother w

them watches, an

his beer, and replaced th

wor telling 'em lies," t

er match," sai

auction announcement pinned to the wall. He shifted his fe

out.... We com' home at tea

A

th' yard and washed w

A

eaker's eyes on his heare

k' your wai

not te

ew it down on a ch

ounger brother

did mine

watch i' y

it wa

wor

and simultaneously, an

y still, the eld

ing in, a thin chap, 'at

A

tch a pair o'

A

look as of prickers, "-

w,

o know what time

wor t'

y.

brother occupied them by taking, in thought, a considerable j

o be set forrard

," the elder admitted, "-w

Think

for two mor

en swearing t

nk there w

wor telling 'em lies,

at the auction announcement on the wal