But on his way across the sandhills he suddenly changed, not only his direction, but his gait also. He advanced cautiously, skirted certain mounds of sand that he did not remember to have seen before, and then as suddenly drew back. Then, instead of advancing again, he returned by a circuitous route, dropped into a sunken sandy way, and then ran as fast as his legs would carry him down to the cottages. There he thrust his head into Morgan's cottage and said something, and ran to the next one—or rather to the next but two, for Edward Garden's double cottage had been locked up since October. Then Howell Gruffydd came to his shop door, and Dafydd called him.
Five minutes later half Llanyglo was out on the sandhills staring through a gap at something that lay beyond.
It was an extraordinary house they saw, and then went round to the back to look at from another point of view. It appeared to consist of a living-room and a scullery, with a patch under the skeleton of a sort of penthouse at the back. It was not even on the land that had been fenced and unfenced and fenced again. Of roof it had none—for you could hardly call the three or four tarpaulins, that lifted as the wind got under them and were kept down by stones, a roof. Parts of the walls were solidly constructed; other parts had been battened up with hedgestakes, filled in with sods and peats, stuffed up with coats, anything. It had an old door that had been used somewhere else, and appeared to be propped up with stones. Over one window-opening hung an old brown coat, the other frame was empty. A bright glow shone on the rubble within, and smoke and sparks came merrily from the chimney. The fire crackled loudly, and there was a pleasant smell of cooking bacon. All about the cavity in the sand lay stones big and little, timbers, stakes, loops of rope. There was a hand-cart too, with its handle making a T in the air. A scraping sound was heard, as of somebody cleaning out a pan, and then came a low "Wouf" and flare of fat in the chimney. Then somebody spoke.
"Squeeze t' barril, Tom, and see if there's another cup o' tea."
"Nay, we've supped t' lot."
"Blow down t' vent-hole...."
As if those walls vanished again even more quickly than they had sprung up, Llanyglo could see a picture vividly in its fancy—a picture of a tilted barrel, with the cheeks of one man distended over the spigot-hole while another caught a muddy trickle in a thick glass——
Then their vision fled, and they were staring at that unimaginable house again——
Slowly, and without a word, they moved off through the soft sand in the direction of the Baptist Chapel.