Along the slope of a bare brown hill, which turned one scarped precipitous side to the sea, and the other, more smooth and undulating, towards a fair scene of inland beauty, straggled the little hamlet of Pont-y-fro. Jos Hughes's shop was the very last house in the village, the road beyond it merging into the rushy moor, and dwindling into a stony track, down which a streamlet trickled from the peat bog above. The house had stood in the same place for two hundred years, and Jos Hughes looked as if he too had lived there for the same length of time. His quaintly cut blue cloth coat adorned with large brass buttons, his knee breeches of corduroy, and grey blue stockings, looking well in keeping with his dwelling, but very out of place behind a counter. His brown wrinkled face and ruddy cheeks were like a shrivelled apple, his shrewd inquisitive eyes peered out through a pair of large brass-rimmed spectacles, and, to judge by his expression, the view they got of the world in general was not satisfactory. It was a day of brilliant sunshine and intense heat, but through the open shop door the sea wind came in with refreshing coolness. Behind the counter Jos Hughes measured and weighed lazily, throwing in with his short weight a compliment, or a screw of peppermints, as the case required. "Who is this coming up in the dust?" he mumbled. "'Tis Morva of the moor," said a woman standing in the doorway and shading her eyes with her hand. "What does she want, I wonder? There's a merry lass she is!" "Oh! day or night, sun or snow don't matter to her," said Jos Hughes. At this moment the subject of their remarks entered the shop, and, sitting on a sack of maize, let her arms fall on her lap. She was quickly followed by a large black sheep dog, who bounded in and, placing his fore-paws on the counter, with tongue hanging out, looked at Jos Hughes intently. "Down, Tudor!" said the girl, and he sprang on a sack of peas beside her. The mountain wind blowing in through the open doorway touzled the little curls that were so unruly in Morva's hair; it was neither gold nor ebony, but, looking at its rich tints, one was irresistibly reminded of the ripe corn in harvest fields, while the blue eyes were like the corn flowers in their vivid colouring. "How are they at Garthowen?" asked Fani "bakkare." "Oh! they are all well there," answered the girl, panting and fanning herself with her sun-bonnet, "except the white calf, and he is better." "There's hot it is!" said Fani, taking up her basket of groceries. "Oh! 'tis hot!" said the girl, "but there's a lovely wind from the sea." "What are you wanting to-day, Morva?" said Jos. "A ball of red worsted for Ann, and an ounce of 'bacco for 'n'wncwl Ebben, and oh! a ha'porth of sweets for Tudor." The dog wagged his tail approvingly as Jos reached down from the shelf a bottle of pink lollipops, for, though a wild country dog, he had depraved tastes in the matter of sweets.