Watt had been busy “taking stock” of the ploughman’s countenance; a compliment apparently by no means appreciated by the object of his regard. The ploughman hastily finished his dinner, and was about to beat a retreat, when Watt enquired, “Is’nt thy name Abel Prosser?”
“No!” cried the man.
“Yes,” cried Shaan, “what does thou deny thy name for?”
“Then, I have a warrant against thee, as the runaway father of Palley Bais Wen’s bantling,” cried Watt; “help to secure him in the king’s name!”
The man made a dart from the house, and Watt after him. The event of the chase remained long unknown as neither were seen again by the present party for many a month.
“The devil take that Watt Gwathotwr!” screamed Sheeny Greeg the farmer’s wife, “for he brings us nothing but trouble. Two years ago he brought us this Moses, the deserted bantling of a rascally Jew, who deceived the silly wench of a hedge-ale-house maid, where he lodged; and now he has brought another of no more strength than a grey-hound puppy; and worse than all, he has scared away Abel Prosser. What are we to do now?”
“Do!” cried Shaan scornfully, “we shall do very well; make these two fellows do Abel’s work, and their own.” With this very comfortable prospect before him, Twm went to rest with the Jew boy in the hay-loft, this first night after his arrival in the alpine region of Cwmny Gwern Ddu.
CHAPTER XI.
Moses has many youthful yearnings. The exploits of the lads in fasting and feasting.
Some say it is a comfort to have a brother in affliction, visited by similar trials, and persecuted rigour. Now Moses and Twm could be sympathetic enough, for they had to endure labour enough and too much, but quite the opposite quantity of eatables; they, therefore, in their misery, became firm and attached companions. Twm at first found much to disgust him with his fellow sufferer, as he seemed disposed to talk of nothing but culinary matters; the roast and boiled, the stewed, the fried, were his darling topics. When Twm dilated on some of the festal doings at Graspacre-hall, the prematurely sunken eyes of this wretched starveling would glisten with a lambent flame that threatened the immediate extinction of his senses, he exclaimed, “O Lord, how I should like to make one of them!—I heard a strange man once talk of an ox being roasted whole—can such a thing be? what a—what a sight! O Lord, how I should like to tear two, three, four, hot ribs out of a roasting ox—I would get into the carcass, and roast with it, so that I might tug, tear, and eat my fill first. If I knew my way to any great town from this awful place, I’ll tell thee Twm, how I should like to get my living—I would eat for wagers—I have heard of such doings, and I know I could die contented, if I had once my stomach full of flesh—ha! ha! ha! I would tear it, and ha! ha! ha! Oh! how I would tear and swallow it!”