“Is this the neighbourhood of the birth-place of Gronwy Owen?” said I to myself. “No wonder that he was unfortunate through life, springing from such a region of wretchedness.”
Wretched as the region seemed, however, I soon found there were kindly hearts close by me.
As I sat on the knoll I heard some one slightly cough very near me, and looking to the left saw a man dressed like a miller looking at me from the garden of the little house, which I have already mentioned.
I got up and gave him the sele of the day in English. He was a man about thirty, rather tall than otherwise, with a very prepossessing countenance. He shook his head at my English.
“What,” said I, addressing him in the language of the country, “have you no English? Perhaps you have Welsh?”
“Plenty,” said he, laughing “there is no lack of Welsh amongst any of us here. Are you a Welshman?”
“No,” said I, “an Englishman from the far east of Lloegr.”
“And what brings you here?” said the man.
“A strange errand,” I replied, “to look at the birth-place of a man who has long been dead.”
“Do you come to seek for an inheritance?” said the man.