The next morning he was at the lake before dawn, and saw cold ripples on the water and a cloud on the highest of the hills. But as the light overcame the cloud and began to warm the ripples, he saw some of his cattle in danger on the steep side of the lake, where the rains run almost perpendicularly down to the margin and cut weals of naked red earth in the mountain-side. And as he was running round to the cattle, he saw the girl upon the water, and again held out his hand to offer his unbaked dough. Again she refused, and said:
"O thou of the moist bread,
I will not have thee."
Then, with smiles, she disappeared.
The youth told his second adventure to his mother, and she advised him to take slightly baked bread. The Welsh have a proverb: "Better is cookery than kingship"; and she being skilled with the oven, baked him the bread.
The next morning he was again at the lake. The cold ripples turned to gold and then to silver, and the cloud left the mountain; and he saw the wind making grey O's and V's on the water, until it was almost evening, and behind him the oak trees in the Sawdde valley gleamed where his homeward way would be, when he saw several cows walking on the water, and then the girl moving towards him. He ran forward into the water; he held out the bread, and she took it, and promised to marry him on the condition that he should not give her three causeless blows; if he did, she would disappear. Suddenly she left him, and he would have cast himself in with despair, if she had not returned with another as beautiful and in the same way, together with a majestic, tall, and hoary man, who promised to bestow the girl upon him if he could distinguish her.
So the two girls stood before him; and the youth, casting down his eyes in thought and perplexity, saw one thrust her little foot forward, and he noticed how her sandals were tied, because he had before studied the beauty of her ankles and feet; and he chose rightly. The old man promised that they should have as many cattle, horses, sheep, and goats as she could count of each without drawing breath. The girl counted quickly, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and so on, and all the beasts came up from the lake; and the young man went with the girl and married her, and lived at Esgair Llaethdy beyond Blaensawdde, and there she bore him three sons.
IN THE WOODS, BERWYN
But one day, when they were to go together to a christening, she was reluctant, saying that it was too far to walk; and he bade her take a horse. She asked for her gloves, and when he returned with them, he found her still delaying, and flicked her shoulder with one and said pettingly, "Go, go." And she reminded him that he had given her a causeless blow.