"They spend more when they are ... like that," said Howell Gruffydd one day to the Council assembled. He said it a little shamefacedly, his fingers fiddling with the green cloth of the Council-table. Nobody spoke. "I--saw--a--man," Howell continued, "a respectable man, with good clothes on his back and a new hat, all spoiled--it was a pity to see it--I saw him knock over row of bot-tles at John Parry's in Gardd Street, just for amusement, and he laugh, and say 'How mut-ss?' like it wass noth-thing, he was so-a drunk----" "It is a pit-ty they make such a noise sometimes," somebody said, in a curiously aggrieved voice.... Evan Pugh, the landlord of the "Trafford," was of precisely the same opinion. They escaped their dilemma by means of a noteworthy bit of government by minority. There was a small section of the Council, easily outvotable at ordinary times, which urged that, after all, things were _as_ they were, that you must live and let live in this world, and that even good things could be pushed to extremes when they became no longer good. And, as these began to speak, one stern bazaar-promoter after another began to look at his watch and to mutter "Dear me--I had no idea it wass so late--indeed I not catss him if I not go now----" They left. This, or else a tactful absenteeism, became their custom whenever licencing matters came up to be discussed. But cases of conscience are cases of conscience all the world over. The sum that Edward Garden proposed as a fair price for that catchment-area up Delyn was two hundred thousand pounds--this for about two thousand acres; and on the day when his lawyers named the figure it was a wonder that the whole Council did not take in a body to their beds. Two hundred thousand pounds! They could not believe their ears. Nor could they believe their eyes either when they got it in writing, words first, and the figures in brackets afterwards. If they had written the single word "_Fancy!_" across that document and sent it straightway back to the lawyers they would no doubt have followed their first impulse; but somebody, less hard hit in the wind than the rest, managed to gasp out the proposal that they should sleep on it, and sleep on it they did. But the night did not alter it. In the morning it was still two hundred thousand pounds (£200,000). News of the rapacity of the demand had leaked out almost immediately. Ordinarily, anybody who had stopped Howell Gruffydd in the street and had asked him a Council secret would have been met with the smiling facer he deserved, but this was extraordinary altogether. On the morning after they had slept on it, William Morgan saw Howell on the Promenade, came up to him, and, making no bones about it whatever, asked him whether it was true.