A quarter of a mile behind our inn of Glanymôr stood the buildings of a fair-sized farm. I used often to walk to Pen Maelgwyn, whose name recalled that of a doughty Welsh chieftain slain in Plantagenet days, ascending the slope thither by means of a narrow footpath traversing the russet stubbles wherein still lingered a few gay marigolds and fragile poppies. The front of the house, a long low erection, was coloured a Naples yellow, but its roof and many clustering byres and sheds were all thickly coated with dazzling whitewash. Above the porch and many windows set with diminutive panes had been painted ornamental stripes of black and vermilion in a local style that has now almost fallen out of fashion. Before the threshold lay a broad stone slab marked in chalk with elaborate patterns in rings and lines, which Dr Wayne, who is skilled in Celtic folk-lore, tells me is a relic of the dim past, when such tracery was designed to entice the good fairies indoors and at the same time to exclude any malignant elementals that might be skulking near. The whole length of the façade of the dwelling was distinguished by a narrow walled-in flower garden, wherein Mrs Mary Davies, the farmer's wife, cherished a number of gaudy dahlias, Indian pinks, purple asters and tall spikes of golden-rod, these last being much patronised by a pair of elegant Red Admiral butterflies. The messuage and its attendant buildings were wholly enclosed within a low rampart of rubble and loose boulders, also profusely daubed with the prevailing whitewash, this boundary wall surrounding an irregular space which included a round weed-covered pond and a number of middens for the cackling fowls of every condition--geese, chickens, ducks, turkeys and even peacocks. The yard was dirty, stony and unkempt, yet it possessed a certain fascination of its own, and there was a stile surmounting its haphazard parapet whereon I often sate, sometimes to watch the crowded life of the haggard, but more generally with my face turned towards the open sea. By directing my eyes hence in a sou'-westerly direction, so as to avoid the converging lines of the Welsh and Irish coasts, I had been told that nothing but the ocean with no intervening obstacle of land stretched between the cliffs of Glanymôr and the far-away coast of North America. There were no trees within a mile and more of Pen Maelgwyn, but the rough stone wall was heavily fringed with tall aromatic herbs such as tansy, wormwood and wild reseda to make amends for the total lack of arboreal verdure.