Mushroom Town

g was coming

it crept slowly up out of the east-as Edward Garden might have said, looking at it again and yet aga

oming to Llanyglo it was com

on; and in other respects also it resembled a snail. It carried, for example, its lodging with it. And it put forward sensitive and intelligent antenn

chmen's boxes and the temporary dwellings of hundreds of men. By day these could be seen, spread out on the level or clustering about the embankments as the flies clustered about the treacled strings and fly-papers Howell Gruffydd hung up in his shop in Llanyglo; at night the oncoming snail seemed phosphorescent, its phosphorescence the flares and fires and lamps in cabin-windows and red eyes for danger that appeared when the other shift took over the work from the men of the day. Whistle of construction-engine and roar of dynamite cartridge; hiss of steam and clang of hammers as they fished the joints; rattle of ro

mp; another yard would follow, piling ever up and up; and you would wait for the toppling over of the great golden reticulated cable. And then all motion in that portion of the great fake would suddenly cease. Beyond the stump you would become aware that another glittering section was a-crawl, balancing, making fast, ever continuing the ascent.... Even so, before and behind Railhead, the work progressed. At a point the construction-engine stopped, the regiment

Llanyglo would have been no worse without, and always loads, loads, trainloads of white-faced people from the smoky towns. And most of all it was bringing to that vague yet unmistakable town-soul of Llanyglo growth and experience, growth that it could not escape and experience that it must square with those numbered days of its idyllic nonage as best it can. Through growing-pains and wild-oats, through revulsions of young remorse and impossible panaceas of repentance, through shrugging worldliness and cynicism and the forgetfulness that lies in laughter, Llanyglo must pass before it becomes-whatever it is to be. One thing only is certain: it can never again be as it was when Edward Garden first went there. Its wild thyme will remain only in patches on its Trwyn, and its sandhills will be glaucous with the blue sea-holly no more. The black cattle have not much

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sing of the Bill, the enterprise had become subject. Members and lawyers alike, those drest in a little brief obedience to the commands of the party whips, these as often as not Members themselves, were virtually the nominees of Edward Garden and his friends. Politics Edward Garden's "line"?... To all outward appearances he had no "line" at all. He merely added another emblem to that little cluster of Mercuries and Greyhounds and Winged Orbs that formed the pendant of his watch-chain. It was only when others, full of plans and hope and secrecy, sought "lines" for themselves that they discovered that he had been beforehand with them. To give an instance: When Mr. Tudor Williams, M.P., apparently as representing somebody else, had come forward with an offer to take up the

ownership of the land that God made for the people, and took his constituents by the button-holes, and sp

and lemon butterflies, nodding harebells, a few tidemarks of black seaweed, a wooden je

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h Neigr road, and others at whose business Llanyglo could only guess. And Mr. Tudor Williams also went there, perhaps to talk about compulsory powers. These and others wandered in groups along the straggling lines of seaweed, and up the Trwyn, and far inland behind John Pritchard's farm, pointing, pacing, discussing, exactly as those minions of the Liverpool Syndicate had done that morning when work had suddenly ceased on Edward Garden's new house; but there was no talk of fence-burning now. Even Dafydd Dafis saw the hopelessness of it, and once more went about with his head bowed like a head of corn heavy with rain. Already men were widening and levelling the Porth Neigr road. One week-end in July, after an unusually large gathering at Edwa

ad never handled before were delivered at his door by the Porth Neigr carrier; these were for the consumption of Edward Garden and his guests; and he waited in person upon Mrs. Garden every Monday morning. He thought of having a Christmas almanack with his own name printed upon it. Blodwen, his wife, made him, in anticipation, a pair of linen half-sleeves that drew up over his forearms. Eesaa

sight of Llanyglo. They turned their surveying instruments on the hamlet as if they had been guns, and laid out their chains as if they had been enslaving the soil itself. Then an advance gang approached, and, even while John knew that the end was near (but not so near as all that), that end came. Eight men marched one evening into Llanyglo, bawling a bawdy chorus, with Sam Kerr showing the way. They had bottles and piggins and stone jars of beer, and, slung with joined-up leather belts between two of them, swung a barrel. They stumbled

already come