''Deed, and I do be always thinking of the bridge when the floods come.'
'Pouf! the bridge is safe if a hundred floods come.' And on he went, ruffled, but wrapped in self-opinionated vanity. He had forgotten George Whitfield and his Master then.
Nevertheless, he went to take a look at the bridge and the river, on his way to the new ironworks, where his first furnace was already at work.
'Ah, well,' he thought, 'the water is high; but, pouf! that is no flood.'
Towards afternoon a thin rain began to fall and liquefy the melting snow. As the men were leaving work, Llwyd came up to him with an anxious face and whispered, 'Master, the river do be desperately full, and if'—
William looked as if he could have struck his faithful monitor to the earth.
Yes, the river was rising and racing through the three arches with the swiftness of a torrent, surcharged with hay and straw, brushwood and mould, washed downward in its course, but they swept well under the bold archways and swirled away in eddies beyond.
'There can be no danger. Those piers are firm enough,' he muttered, as if to convince himself as well as Llwyd.
Dusk came down and blotted out the scene. In turning away he came upon Rhys, whose gloomy face it was well he could not see.
Llwyd and Davy too were there, with other watchers who had helped to rear the bridge.