The next day two strangers from Porth Neigr appeared at Llanyglo, and began to stake out and to enclose a belt of land that extended, roughly, from the Porth Neigr road on both sides of John Pritchard's farm nearly as far as Edward Garden's house. John Willie watched these two men at work with their pawls, measuring and driving, but the curious thing was that nobody else did so. Save for the Porth Neigr men, the blue and sulphur butterflies and the rabbits, the sandhills were extraordinarily deserted. John Willie wandered here and there in search of somebody to talk to, and by and by found himself in Howell Gruffydd's shop. The grocer showed his false teeth in a smile, and then continued to weigh sugar. "Well, John Willie Garden, can you say 'Llanfairpwllgwyngyll----' yet?" he asked, his eyes gleaming as brightly as the bright scoop in his hand. "Where's everybody?" John Willie demanded. "You look for Eesaac Oliver?" Howell asked. "He go errand for me, to the lighthouse. You meet him coming back if you go." "Where are all the men?" John Willie demanded again, and Howell made a quick and mocking gesture. "Indeed, one hide behind that cur-tain--quick, look see!... Ha, ha, ha!" he laughed when John Willie involuntarily turned in the direction in which he had pointed. "I cat-ss you that time, John Willie Garden! You think there's a man behind that lit-tle cur-tain, hardly so big as my apron! Your sister, she s'arper than that, whatever!... You go find Eesaac Oliver. He fetch eggs from the lighthouse. Perhaps you meet all the men there too----" And that was as much as John Willie could get out of him. It was plain that something extraordinary was toward. It was a habit of John Willie Garden's to look in at Pritchard's farm of an evening, and there to pass the news with John Pritchard and to watch his ancient mother, bent doublefold over her Bible, running a rush-light along line after line so close to the page that the book was scored across with bars of smoky brown. He went as usual that evening. But he had hardly opened the door when it was closed again upon him. "We go to bed," said John Pritchard, and packed John Willie off without his customary "Nos da." But John Willie knew that they were not going to bed. The door had not been closed so quickly but that he had seen a dozen men crowding the kitchen, and Dafydd Dafis's eyes, hollower than ever in the light of the candle that stood at his elbow, with a sentimental and knife-like gleam in them as they turned. The next morning, every stake that those two Porth Neigr men had driven in had been uprooted again, and a board with "Rhybudd" on it lay down the beach, already lapped by the rising tide. * * * * *