I walked fast, but the lad was a shrewd walker, and though encumbered with his greatcoat contrived to keep tolerably up with me. The road went over hill and dale, but upon the whole more upward than downward. After proceeding about an hour and a half we left the lake, to the southern extremity of which we had nearly come, somewhat behind, and bore away to the south-east, gradually ascending. At length the lad, pointing to a small farm-house on the side of a hill, told me he was bound thither, and presently bidding me farewell, turned aside up a footpath which led towards it.
About a minute afterwards a small delicate furred creature with a white mark round its neck and with a little tail trailing on the ground ran swiftly across the road. It was a weasel or something of that genus; on observing it I was glad that the lad and the dog were gone, as between them they would probably have killed it. I hate to see poor wild animals persecuted and murdered, lose my appetite for dinner at hearing the screams of a hare pursued by greyhounds, and am silly enough to feel disgust and horror at the squeals of a rat in the fangs of a terrier, which one of the sporting tribe once told me were the sweetest sounds in “natur.”
I crossed a bridge over a deep gulley which discharged its waters into a river in a valley on the right. Arran rose in great majesty on the farther side of this vale, its head partly shrouded in mist. The day now became considerably overcast. I wandered on over much rough ground till I came to a collection of houses at the bottom of a pass leading up a steep mountain. Seeing the door of one of the houses open I peeped in, and a woman who was sitting knitting in the interior rose and came out to me. I asked the name of the place. The name which she told me sounded something like Ty Capel Saer—the House of the Chapel of the Carpenter. I inquired the name of the river in the valley. Cynllwyd, hoary-headed, she seemed to say; but here, as well as with respect to her first answer, I speak under correction, for her Welsh was what my old friends, the Spaniards, would call muy cerrado, that is, close or indistinct. She asked me if I was going up the bwlch. I told her I was.
“Rather you than I,” said she, looking up to the heavens, which had assumed a very dismal, not to say awful, appearance.
Presently I began to ascend the pass or bwlch, a green hill on my right intercepting the view of Arran, another very lofty hill on my left with wood towards the summit. Coming to a little cottage which stood on the left I went to the door and knocked. A smiling young woman opened it, of whom I asked the name of the house.
“Ty Nant—the House of the Dingle,” she replied.
“Do you live alone?” said I.
“No; mother lives here.”
“Any Saesneg?”
“No,” said she with a smile, “S’sneg of no use here.”