A straggling row of cottages, a few paths over the sandhills, three Chapels, a school, and a few scattered farms: the rest, mountains, sea, and air. The tide was creaming over the short thumb of a jetty, and the herd of small black cows was patrolling the beach. Morgan's cottage, Roberts's cottage, their own cottage, not more than a dozen other cottages; and then Howell Gruffydd's shop: already the place was full of memories for John Willie Garden. That wide pool in the sands that reflected the sky had not been there a fortnight before--for the sea had now lost its summer look, and it changed the configuration of the shore at night. A puff of low-blown smoke showed where Dafydd Dafis was giving a boat a coat of tar. There was the small crack of a gun--John Willie's friend was shooting rabbits. On the top of Mrs. Roberts's chimney a new flat stone had been placed, and a new staple for the shutter had been driven into the wall. John Willie had still no stockings on, but he was sensible now of the wind on his legs. They were as brown as rope. His hands too were brown and grimy, and smelt pleasant. That morning he had been helping the men to get in the winter peat.... So he watched, and at tea-time he descended; but already he was making up the exultant tales he would tell the boys of his form, of the spanking place where his father had taken a cottage and might presently be building a house. He would boast over them in the Welsh words he had learned, and triumph no end that they did not understand him. Only to a few of his special friends would he confide the meanings of his expressions in English. Three days later he was doing even so, at Pannal School, near Harrogate, in Yorkshire.