In such a remote place, on the borderland which is half English and half Welsh, lived Christmas Williams. The village was scarcely more than a hamlet, having no pretension to a village street, its scattered cottages standing alone in their own gardens. A brown, shallow, brawling little river, which filled the quiet air with its singing, ran along under the churchyard walls, over which the tall lime-trees threw their deep shadows on the busy stream. West of the churchyard, still on the bank of the river, lay Christmas Williams' garden: his special, favourite garden, not the common piece of ground beside his house open to every foot, but his own locked up, fenced-in plot, reached by a footpath across his orchard. Just within sight of the church stood Christmas Williams' house, the village inn, holding a conspicuous position on a slope of ground, with a primitive sort of terrace in front of it; over the wall of which he could often be seen leaning, to look down on the carts and wagons passing in the lane below, and to send messages, some friendly and some hostile, by the drivers to their masters, on the various farmsteads lying round the village. There was no one in the neighbourhood who was considered better off, or who had so widespread an influence as Christmas. He had been churchwarden for many years, as well as constable of the township; for rural police were not yet in existence. It was he who kept the keys of the church, as well as of the crib, which was a small jail built in one corner of the churchyard, and the terror of all the children of the parish. Yet the crib was seldom occupied, except sometimes after a club-day at the village inn, when any drunken brawl was sure to excite Christmas Williams' wrath, and bring down swift punishment on the offenders. It was in vain to urge the argument that hard drinking was to his own profit; he only permitted his customers to have as much as he considered good for them; and if by any mischance they overstepped the doubtful line between sobriety and drunkenness, down came the keys of the crib, to which, as constable, he felt pledged to commit all brawlers and disturbers of the public peace.