This is a sad little story to centre around so charming a place as Harlech, now dedicated, it seems, only to the happy laughter of contented holiday makers. Harlech stands upon the side of a castle-crowned hill, separated from the sea by those magnificent golf links famous throughout the world. It is an ideal holiday resort in the midst of a district teeming with objects of natural beauty and antiquarian interest. From it, the railway line, which follows the greater part of the Cardigan Bay coast, gives easy access to such places as Barmouth, Aberystwyth, or northward to Criccieth and Pwllheli, while inland is a district of little lake-studded mountains and moorland, offering endless attractions to the walker, the artist, or the fisherman. [Illustration: _Harlech Castle._] [Illustration: a swan near the edge of a pond, with the head of a woman. The head is staring down into the water, perhaps mournfully.] THE SWAN OF GLASFRYN. That part of Carnarvonshire in North Wales that stretches out into the sea to Braich-y-Pwll, and forms the northern boundary of beautiful Cardigan Bay, is known as Lleyn. Lleyn is a peninsula of splendid scenery, both round the coast and inland by its mountains and moorland lakes; and almost every square mile of the place has its legend, or brave tale of historic times to tell. Midway between its two coasts is the lonely little tarn of Glasfryn, about which a story is told reminiscent of that connected with Bala Lake which has been recorded in a previous story of Legend Land. Llyn Glasfryn, as the modern maps call it, was once Ffynnon Grassi, or Grace’s Well, which supplied water to those who lived by, and cultivated, the fertile fields now engulfed by the waters of the lake. Grace was a village girl whose task it was to tend this well, and one of her duties was to see that the cover which enclosed it was always kept closed when the well was not in use. One day, so many years ago that nobody can rightly tell how long since it was, Grace neglected her duty. Some say that it was because of a mysterious and strikingly handsome youth who came down from Yr Eifl, the splendid mountain that rises nearly 2,000 feet into the sky, a couple of miles away. Others, that she was the victim of sorceries of a beautiful but evil enchantress from Anglesea. But anyhow the cover of the well was left open one night, and, as happened at Bala, soon after the weary country folk had retired to rest, they were aroused, in alarm, by a great flood which came from Ffynnon Grassi, which was pouring out a stream of water, that nobody could check. Soon the prosperous farms and fertile lands round about were submerged beneath the waters, and Llyn Glasfryn was formed. But the careless Grace to whose negligence the great misfortune was due did not escape unpunished. She was turned into a swan, and her fate was that, until the Day of Judgment, she must swim about the lake which her forgetfulness had caused to be created.