Then one day an offer was made them, which was also an admission. It was an offer of compensation and of another dwelling elsewhere, and the admission apparently was that their title was a good one. Ned was for accepting the offer, and accepted it would probably have been but for a circumstance that Tommy discovered only in a roundabout way. He was congratulated one morning in the "Marine" Tap on having escaped ejectment. This was the first he had heard of ejectment. He asked a few questions, and soon after went out for a walk. Ejectment! Apparently they had been considering his ejectment, had found it for some reason or other not to be feasible, and had substituted the offer of compensation.... Then, while this offer was still neither accepted nor rejected, something else came to Tommy Kerr's ears. This was that the sites, not of one, but of both the new hotels, were at last decided on. As a matter of fact, this choice was now almost a foregone conclusion. Next to Gardd Street, which ran parallel with the shore, Pontnewydd Street, in which lay the Hafod, was becoming the principal street of the town. It ran from the shore to Pritchard's Corner, was prolonged past that to the new station, and was the main thoroughfare for landaus and wagonettes off to the mountains. The hotels were to be built one on either side of the Hafod, not actually adjoining it, but not more than a couple of strides away. Already in Tommy Kerr's suspicious mind the mischief was done. Howell Gruffydd, all blandishments to his face, had been making secret inquiries behind his back, had he? He had been talking about compensation and whispering with attorneys and such-like, had he? Very well. That settled it. Tommy would go when he was purred out, and not before. As for that snuffling Howell Gruffydd.... "So that's it, Mister Treacle-Tongue, is it?" he had muttered. "Reight. As long as we know where we are. I'm off out to buy a ha'porth o' thread----" And with the ha'porth of thread he had sewn a large button on each of his pocket-flaps, and thenceforward meeting Howell Gruffydd in the street, had ostentatiously buttoned every pocket up before answering the prosperous grocer's smiling "Good morning." They began to dig the foundations of those glittering hotels.