Mushroom Town

own on the Lime Street and St. George's Hall pavements as if they had been so many fishermen s

better have another shot at mangane

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'

ittle too-timely?" a

ty miles away--" The speaker paused from delic

ologist down-one

zarded a remark.-"But wouldn't burnt mi

ng from a slight confusion of ideas. Nobody had said

ou say, Ar

r himself how matters stood. Until he should do so the disputants glared, so to speak, at one another. A certain element of contempt, that looked at first like tolerance, had even entered into the quarrel. Thus, a section of fence on a portion of the sandhill

ke being a damned bad spe

eemed to be ga

and its purple mountains, its unproductive sandhills and its non dividen

something astonishin

with the darkness setting in soon after four and the sun not coming up behind the mountains again until nearly eight; none the less the fact r

t fitted, and the little socket John Willie had scooped out under the date-stone still awaiting its sixpence-with all this arrested as life and growth and motion were arrested in the Enchanted

or of the Sixpenny Guide the Squire's remark about invasion

t that's neither here nor there. They have their notions about it, and those at any rate are immemorial. Look here: you're pottering about this country just now; just count how many houses you find with the name 'Hafod Unos.' You'll find quite a lot. There's a very big one Bangor way, that probably took some years to build, but probably one of these places was its foundation.... And a house

the sandy gully that ran from Pritchard's gap down to the shore. And Llanyglo had smiled. Aha! They were going to build a walled enclosure, were they? Something that wouldn't burn, whatever? Well, well, if it amused them to build walls on winter nights when everybody else was wa

ng Trwyn light, two reds and a white, saw t

s had been tampered with by tricky Welshmen, they had another and a double incentive-the sense of family unity, and of the honour of the gradeliest county on earth, Lancashire. No Kerr, no lad from Lancashire whomsoever, could thole to be bested by a Welshman. Lancashire was the place for which Johnnie Briggs played cricket, the plac

He had seen a way of convicting Llanyglo out of its own mouth. They threw down fences on the grounds that the land was common land; very well, if it was common, as they claimed, it was a proper site for a Hafod Unos. Sauce

he dark the fou

ese illumined little enough of the waste; the moving, straddling shadows they cast hardly began before they were lost in the darkness again. Knitting-needles of light came and went again on the p

nder the Llanyglo sand; and they had not set up fences

as his spade gave a clink and a jump in his hand. "I

anterns cast a short parabola of shadow. It w

mmy replied, spitting on his han

f their plan apiece and dry-walled, all save Tommy, who went to and fro with a hand-cart, fetching stone, not too much at a time, because of the dead softness of the sand. For the general design Ned's word was law; for details, each used his own gumption. They worked and grunted, and worked and grunted, and worked. By the tim

al plan that had been agreed upon in the taproom of the Station Hotel. "T' corners, t'

se, but true by plumb and level. This might be a joke against Llanyglo, but it was a workmanlike one. On

s were laid, but they were the princi

he said, with satisfaction. "

m replied. "Shall we start

n to bring some

A

l ha' we'r

rners, and they lay on their backs on it, smoking, and watching the red and white spokes of the light high over their heads, twenty-mile spokes, of a wheel that had no circumference but its sweep through the night. Now and then Sam gave a low chuckle; but Ned smoked, spat, and was silent, save

ad climbed up above, and was sitting astride a beam with

hat quoin-no, th' one wi' th' bolt-this is th' chimney end-and get them three

, so that to deracinate him is to thrust him back again into the bestial state and to make the land as desert as the sea. By all prognostication, Edward Garden's smoke should have been the first to add itself to that of the cluster of humble dwellings between the mountains and the waves that was Llanyglo; but of that lawn of lightsome blue that veils Llanyglo to-day the breakfast-smoke of

e is it?"

miled for the first time that

with indescribable dryness, "-unless

id Tommy, strik

r to winks as they watched the flame

bank lay over him. Then came the first glitter on the waves, and, as if with light all other faculties awake, folk became conscious of the crowing of cocks and the falling of the breakers on the shore. Howell Gruf

drew back. Then, instead of advancing again, he returned by a circuitous route, dropped into a sunken sandy way, and then ran as fast as his legs would carry him down to the cottages. There he thrust his head into Morgan

out on the sandhills staring throug

r them and were kept down by stones, a roof. Parts of the walls were solidly constructed; other parts had been battened up with hedgestakes, filled in with sods and peats, stuffed up with coats, anything. It had an old door that had been used somewhere else, and appeared to be propped up with stones. Over one window-opening hung an old brown coat, the other frame was empty. A bright glow shone on the rubble within, and

om, and see if there'

ve supped

n t' vent

d see a picture vividly in its fancy-a picture of a tilted barrel, with the cheeks of one

d they were staring at tha

oved off through the soft sand in