And now that they had got him there they hardly knew what they wanted of him. That building exploit of the Kerrs having thrust the Inclosures Dispute a good deal into the background, and Dafydd Dafis's honourable if sullen refusal to injure men who had risked their lives with him having given that exploit itself a kind of condonation, it seemed as if their Member had merely come to a Sasiwn after all. But land had changed hands: they had a vague sense of impending change and of the discomfort of change; and, as they answered their Member's questions, the very presence in their midst of this man who moved behind the scenes of the drama of large events accentuated this feeling.
"What is he like, this one?" Mr. Tudor Williams asked, gently yet absent-mindedly patting big John Pritchard's back as he stooped to cough. They had been speaking of Terry Armfield.
They described Terry as he had appeared to them in the Court at Porth Neigr.
"Is he taking over any other land?" ...
You would not have supposed, from the way in which Mr. Tudor Williams, M.P., asked the question that he merely sought to know how much they knew. And it had not occurred to Llanyglo that these transfers of land might be, not an end, but only a beginning. Yet Mr. Tudor Williams had good, if private reasons, for knowing that this very land might soon be more than merely worth acquiring.... He was not deceiving them. It pleased them to think that their Member was the repository of weighty secrets, and he was merely indulging this simple and legitimate liking. But already he intended to go to Liverpool in order to find out what this Syndicate's plans really were. He wanted to know whether the Syndicate, in its turn, was aware of something else, something still very secret indeed, so secret that five minutes at certain keyholes might have been worth many thousands of pounds....
"And this Hafod Unos—on whose land is it erected?" he next asked.
He made a little grimace when they told him, on Squire Wynne's.
"Then perhaps he will let it stand; he is cracked in his head about old customs, and antiquities, and suchlike foolishness, when there is great work wait-ing to be done. It is not our business if he likes to let these people squat upon his land."
But here John Pritchard interposed heavily.
"But it is our business if they sing 'Thomas, make Room for your Uncle' in the middle of prayers," he said.