He would have done better to begin his work all over again than to stop and think.
What ... ah yes, he remembered! He remembered and chuckled. Why, he had been on the point of forgetting the cream of the whole joke!——
He stooped by the rounded grey mound of lime and plaster that represented his bed, but his knees gave, and he came with a little thump to the floor. But he rolled over on his side, and his fingers found what they sought, and after a few minutes he rose again. In his hand was the red flag he had stolen from the cab of Dafydd Dafis's road-engine. That was to go up where his chimney had been, that chimney that had emitted that first smoke on that far-off first morning. The town, when it awoke, must on no account miss that. Tommy Kerr wanted to see the faces of Howell Gruffydd, John Pritchard, Dafydd Dafis and Co. when they saw that flag....
He tottered to the ladder that ran up into the loft.
He fell twice from the lower rungs of it, but a foot of lime made his fall soft. He mounted to the top, and crawled on his belly across the open rafters of the loft. He did not know how he got out on to the roof; it seemed to him that he lay below for a long time, gazing up through a gap at the paling sky and wondering how it was to be done, and then miraculously found himself where he wished to be. Then he got on his feet.
Then he saw them, the people in the street below. He had again forgotten they were there. So much the better; they should see him do it. Then he'd give a shout that should wake all Wales, and—and—by that time the pubs ought to be opening....
But the little hand-staff of the flag was not long enough to please him. He wanted a longer one, to make more of a show. It took a whole tree to carry the flag over the Kursaal Dancing Rooms there. It was stupid of Tommy not to have thought of that—not to have brought one up from below, where there were plenty—yes, plenty——
As it happened, he did not need the stick. It all came about very softly and gently. He was standing up, again looking about for a longer stick, when once more his brain gave a wobble. The watchers below saw him lean, as formerly his chimney had leaned, only now Tommy Kerr leaned the other way——
And so gently did he come over, and so comparatively short a distance had he to fall, that you would have sworn it did not hurt him very much. He stuck to the little square of red calico at the end of the short staff; it was still in his hand when they picked him up from the heap of chimney-bricks that choked the little alley where the principal entrance to the Kursaal Gardens now is.
Ancient Mrs. Pritchard, when she heard of it, baa-ed, and said that folk came and went—came and went——