"Give us another inch, Sam," he grunted, "--a bit more--a bit more--_whoa!_ Tom, that quoin--no, th' one wi' th' bolt--this is th' chimney end--and get them three strutts ready, accordinglie to th' letters.... How are ye down there, Harry?" The mason brother was building the chimney. It was an outside one, massive as a buttress, and Harry was building it well and truly, for it was the essential of the house. Smoke must go up it before dawn, the hearth-smoke of civilised man, the lowly and secular and beautiful token that he has made himself an abiding-place on a spot of earth, and becomes part of that spot, and it part of him, so that to deracinate him is to thrust him back again into the bestial state and to make the land as desert as the sea. By all prognostication, Edward Garden's smoke should have been the first to add itself to that of the cluster of humble dwellings between the mountains and the waves that was Llanyglo; but of that lawn of lightsome blue that veils Llanyglo to-day the breakfast-smoke of the Kerrs was the fore-runner. At half-past four they were shovelling out the mountain of sand and making the hearth for it. By six Tommy had brought in the bundle of dry twigs and faggots he had carefully hidden away. Harry was filling in the space between the main beam and the transom of the door; when Tom asked him for a match he sprang down, and Ned and Sam also descended from the roof. "What time is it?" Tom asked. Ned gave a glance round, and smiled for the first time that night as he drew out his watch. "Five past six," he said, and added, with indescribable dryness, "--unless som'b'dy's been meddling wi' my watch." "Here goes," said Tommy, striking a match.... They exchanged glances that were near to winks as they watched the flames. It was their equivalent of a cheer. The night paled; the Trwyn light went out; and off the headland a seal disported itself in the icy sea. The day stole across Delyn, but Mynedd Mawr still remained an awful precipice of ink--the shadow of the morning bank lay over him. Then came the first glitter on the waves, and, as if with light all other faculties awake, folk became conscious of the crowing of cocks and the falling of the breakers on the shore. Howell Gruffydd got up and began to rekindle his fire. A bolt was shot back at Pritchard's farm. Dafydd Dafis packed his breakfast in his tin and set out for his day's work--a little reslating of the roof of the Baptist Chapel.