Late in the evening I directed my steps across the bridge to the green, where I had discoursed with the Irish itinerants. I wished to have some more conversation with them respecting their way of life, and, likewise, as they had so strongly desired it, to give them a little Christian comfort, for my conscience reproached me for my abrupt departure on the preceding evening. On arriving at the green, however, I found them gone, and no traces of them but the mark of their fire and a little dirty straw. I returned, disappointed and vexed, to my inn. Early the next morning I departed from Chester for Llangollen, distant about twenty miles; I passed over the noble bridge and proceeded along a broad and excellent road, leading in a direction almost due south through pleasant meadows. I felt very happy—and no wonder; the morning was beautiful, the birds sang merrily, and a sweet smell proceeded from the new-cut hay in the fields, and I was bound for Wales. I passed over the river Allan and through two villages called, as I was told, Pulford and Marford, and ascended a hill; from the top of this hill the view is very fine. To the east are the high lands of Cheshire, to the west the bold hills of Wales, and below, on all sides a fair variety of wood and water, green meads and arable fields. “You may well look around, Measter,” said a waggoner, who, coming from the direction in which I was bound, stopped to breathe his team on the top of the hill; “you may well look around—there isn’t such a place to see the country from, far and near, as where we stand. Many come to this place to look about them.” I looked at the man, and thought I had never seen a more powerful-looking fellow; he was about six feet two inches high, immensely broad in the shoulders, and could hardly have weighed less than sixteen stone. I gave him the seal of the morning, and asked whether he was Welsh or English. “English, Measter, English; born t’other side of Beeston, pure Cheshire, Measter.” “I suppose,” said I, “there are few Welshmen such big fellows as yourself.” “No, Measter,” said the fellow, with a grin, “there are few Welshmen so big as I, or yourself either, they are small men mostly, Measter, them Welshers, very small men—and yet the fellows can use their hands. I am a bit of a fighter, Measter, at least I was before my wife made me join the Methodist connexion, and I once fit with a Welshman at Wrexham, he came from the hills, and was a real Welshman, and shorter than myself by a whole head and shoulder, but he stood up against me, and gave me more than play for my money, till I gripped him, flung him down and myself upon him, and then of course ’twas all over with him.” “You are a noble fellow,” said I, “and a credit to Cheshire. Will you have sixpence to drink?” “Thank you, Measter, I shall stop at Pulford, and shall be glad to drink your health in a jug of ale.”