"Let me pour you out a glass of port first; it's the only thing I have that hasn't some sort of a charge on it," said the Squire. He was a heavy man of near sixty, the owner of a family pew in Porth Neigr Church, a stickler for rainbowing, and, in a feckless sort of way, something of an antiquary. His adherence to the three-bottle habit helped to make the fortunes of several quacks in our own day, who advertise infallible cures for the neuritis he and his kind have bequeathed to their descendants. The only sign the Squire himself showed of this was a slightly ochreous eye.--Then, when he had poured out the port, "It's you who have the money nowadays," he said, meaning by "you" Gladstonian Liberals. "Look at this ceiling of mine. There isn't a ceiling in Wales with a finer coffering, but look at the state it's in!--And that chandelier! It holds forty candles, but _I_ can't afford 'em! This is what _I_ use." He pointed to his father's old reservoir colza lamp on the table.--"And I'll show you the staircase presently.... Sell? It won't make sixpence difference to me one way or the other. Which piece is it you want?" Mr. Garden told him. "Well, you'd better see my man about it. Sheard, Porth Neigr, next to the corn-chandler's shop. Or I'll see him if you like. But if we do come to terms I should like to give you a piece of advice." "What is that?" Edward Garden asked. "I suppose you're not Welsh by any chance?" "No." "Well, I'm half Welsh, and things jog on well enough as long as I'm alive. There are all sorts of questions that simply don't arise. But they're a queer people here, and when you get to the bottom of it, practically the question of landowning resolves itself into keeping on the right side of Dafydd Dafis, if you see what I mean." It was not necessary to tell Edward Garden that, but he begged the Squire to go on. "For instance," the Squire continued, "I've a couple of mortgages foreclosing any time now--Sheard will tell you--I don't even know who the mortgagees are. But if they're Welsh, so much the better for them. I mean if they introduce changes, or go at things like a bull at a gate, they'll wish I'd gone on paying them interest. A smile does more than a smack here. If they inclose, for example----" "Ah, this new Act----" "Or any other Act There was a case at that No Man's Land of mine over there----" The Squire jerked his head in the direction of the shafts where the family fortunes had been sunk. "An Englishman came, and began to fence, and there was a Dafydd Dafis sort of fellow there, and this man Rodgers thought that because he wore strings round the knees of his corduroys he wasn't anybody of consequence ... and there you are. The only thing Edward the First could do with the bards was to destroy them, and they're the same breed yet.--So that's my advice. For the rest, you'd better see Sheard. Have another glass of port."