Cities and towns -- Growth -- Fiction; Wales -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
On the forenoon of that day on which work on Edward Garden's house
suddenly ceased, Dafydd Dafis, sitting astride of a coping, was singing
as he drove heavy cut nails into a beam. His song was martial, and it
almost made his joinering warlike. The burden of it was that Cambria's
foes (here a bang with the hammer) should fall beneath the sword
(another bang) as the pine falls when the levin (bang) flashes from the
cloud that hides the head of Arenig (bang, and a nail well home). John
Willie Garden, who had heard somewhere that coins of the current mintage
were placed in cavities in foundation stones, was chipping a hollow in
the bedding of the "E.G." stone for the reception of a well-brightened
sixpence and a document in his own handwriting, that should tell future
ages how one John Willie Garden had lived and had done thus and thus.
The sun was hot; the new timbers were as bright as John Willie's own
primrose-coloured hair against the intense blue; and the workmen below
seemed to stand on their shadows as lead soldiers stand on their little
bases of metal. John Willie finished his cavity, and then clambered up
to the ridge-tree. There, putting his hands behind his head, he lay on
his back, his dangling legs balancing him below. He blinked up at the
sky, and from time to time called across to Dafydd Dafis, "Peth a elwir
(whatever the English word might be) yn Cymraeg, Dafydd?" Then Dafydd
would give him the Welsh, and he would practise it softly.
It was just on the stroke of midday when Dafydd abruptly broke off his
singing in the middle of a word. John Willie, blinking up at the blue,
waited for him to resume; as he did not do so, John Willie turned his
head. Dafydd was looking away over the sandhills in the direction of
John Pritchard's farm.
John Willie sat up.
"Who is it?" he asked.
Dafydd continued to look under his hand.--"Indeed, it look like Mr.
Sheard," he muttered, "but he have strangers with him. It is Mr.
Sheard's carr-adge, whatever.... Hugh Roberts!" He called to the men
down below, who were making ready for their midday meal. He said
something in Welsh to them, and they too looked.
Mr. Sheard's governess-cart was drawn up by the earth-wall half a mile
away, and from it three figures had descended. They climbed over the
wall and began to cross the sandhills. One of them walked slowly and
somewhat after the manner of a clock-work toy, as if he was pacing a
distance; and another, after looking this way and that about him, moved
off to the right, apparently also pacing. He stopped and held up his
hand, and then returned, laying out along the ground as he went,
something that made a little glitter in the sun. They came together
again, and seemed to confer. Then over the earth-wall John Pritchard
climbed, and William Sheard went to meet him. After that they all
pointed, in various directions.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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