Whence came these stone-carts and timber-carts, these girders and castings, a single one only taking up a couple of trucks? Whence came these wains of floor-boards with their trailing tails bobbing up and down within an inch or two of the white road, these bastions of metal and ballast, these crawling and earth-shaking traction-engines with the little bellies and the monstrous wheels and the dotted line of lorries and trollies behind them? Whence these sawn planks, these massive frames with machinery parts on them so heavy that every rut threatens a standstill, these contractors' vans with absurd little trolley-wheels, these gatlings of drain-pipes, these wagons of plumbers' material, these vans of provisions, this army of men? Why do these now choke the roads that formerly were empty save for the passing of a wain of whispering hay, or the light market-cart that left a smell of raspberries and a stain of Welsh song behind, or Ned Kerr with his folding hut and clogging-knife, or Ynys Lovell with her packing-case cart and her mother with her loops of cane seeking chairs to mend? Where did they come from, and what are they doing here? The stone, of course, comes from the Porth Neigr quarry, where the blasts shake the rocks and the shooting of waste resounds throughout the day. And the castings come from Manchester and Middlesborough and Wigan and Leeds. And the sawn planks come from Russia and the Baltic, and the larches for scaffolding from the Merionethshire valleys. These things come from these places--if you look at it that way. But look at it the other way and they have an origin mystical indeed. They are conceived of fecund nods and looks, of the germination of writing and initials and signatures and contract-stamps. They are born of print and promotion and allotment, and the cord is cut when sums are paid on application, and more in three months' time. They thrive when Chairmen, standing up on platforms, say "the adoption of the Accounts has been moved and seconded----," and become lusty when more clerks have to be called in, and temporary premises have to be taken, to cope with the public rush for the splendid thing. You see their real origin on those blackboards that seem to set Llanyglo its new multiplication sum, and in those paragraphs in the Manchester and Liverpool and London papers. You see it again when the new Local Government Bill receives the Royal Assent. You see it once more when from the machines of printers in Nottingham and Harrow and Frome and Belfast there are turned out the posters that already overspread the northern hoardings, bidding Blackpool look to itself, warning Douglas that it has another competitor, elbowing Bridlington, shoving Yarmouth aside. There are half a dozen of these posters out already, and if they are not strictly speaking representations of Llanyglo, they are something more--they are prophecies, which you will do well to heed if you want to put your money on a good thing.