His voice, whether he sang or spoke, was of wide range and exquisite adjustment, and he spoke with care and gusto, as if he loved his native tongue. Under its influence, he respected nobody of any importance. Thus, he was once pretty justly thrashed; when, having tired his chastiser by his patience, he remarked at great length that he supposed the other did not know who he was, and the splendour of his manner overcame his heated companion. No sooner had he got home than he gave a rapturous description of how one had given another a thrashing down the road. He did it so well that he was asked whether he was the beater. "No," said he bravely, "it happened that I was beat."

Had he lost by a bargain, had he taken a bad coin unawares, had he been worsted in argument, he could so rant that he moved every one, and himself obviously first of all, and made the worse appear the better. He kept a genealogical tree in constant use by pruning and watering, and though there was not only a prince but a poet in it, I think he gloried less in the old splendour of his family than in the length of its fall, as who should say he had once been so high that he was "from morn to dewy eve" in falling.

When first I saw him, he had just come into the "Cross Inn." It was mid-day; the weather was cold and wet; and since he never liked to see a man drinking by himself, and the shepherds coming down from the mountains to market had called pretty often, he was not sober. He told me that his was a fine house—the finest in the village, and therefore in the county; and that it had not paid the former tenant well, who had, in fact, sold but eighteen gallons of beer in a month. He was going to do better than that, he said; to make a beginning, he was going to drink that quantity himself. I asked for brandy. He had not a drop, and explained that he had a weakness for it himself—took a drop very often; and that therefore, to get out of temptation, he had finished his stock on the night before. "But," said he, "I have upstairs such a bed as you—pardon me—never slept in yet."

"I have no doubt," said I, and sat down.

CARNARVON CASTLE

But when he heard that I was walking across Wales, and had therefore tried many beds, he insisted that I should see the thing. It was the finest in the village—in the county—in Wales—"I don't see why I should not say in the whole world." Truly it was a noble bed, in a great, empty, raftered, uncarpeted room; the wood all darkened oak, with a dusky gleam; the hangings ample and of a rich crimson stuff; the purity of the linen splendid. If a royal person or a poet had not slept in it, "that was their misfortune." He stood by, awed and reverent, beholding the bed. I was not his equal in eloquence, and he echoed my praise with an elaborate "of course": and for the sake of hearing some of the words he loved, he finally invited me to spend a night in the bed, "as his guest," so he magnificently said.

All his family were of the same temper. His father and mother had gone to London years ago, and, at seventy years of age, to the infirmary of a workhouse....

The aged paupers sat in a long, grey, motionless, and silent row—like a sculptured frieze, or like persons expecting to be photographed—under the wall of a church. Before them was a strip of grass, one emerald half of which shone so that it seemed of an element like flame; for it was pure, insubstantial colour; and into this, as the paupers saw, the tide of the shadow of the church gradually ate. Beyond the grass was the infirmary, and alongside it a yellow road, and on that a hearse. Watching this and the paupers, a crowd of persons, with uninterested, inquisitive eyes and bowler hats, stuck their noses through the railings which ran between the busy street and the infirmary. Motor cars brayed, hooves clattered.

Presently three men carried out a coffin, containing the remains of Mrs. Owen, and shoved it into the hearse. "God love me, what a coffin!" said one of the crowd. But the frieze of paupers were silent and motionless in the long grey row—all but the husband of the corpse. He, like the others, seemed to stare at the hearse with fixed gaze, and in a loud voice he remembered what a bonny woman the corpse had been, and in particular how, while a travelling musician played in the village street, when she was past fifty years of age, she had locked herself into the kitchen and danced, having spread a mat to deaden the clicking of her merry clogs; and he had watched her, unobserved. The story and his uncontrolled, bleating voice raised a laugh under the bowler hats; and the old men lifted their heads and straightened themselves and laughed; and most loudly and grimly of all laughed Owen, while he remembered the cottage in sight of the beacons of Breconshire; and the hearse rolled out and the crowd removed.