In the long winter evenings, when no one could possibly invent a task or job for them, Twm and Moses would be allowed to sit a little by the turf fire; when the latter would venture to narrate some hungry tale of gastronomic heroism, in which his fancy revelled, Twm would recite ghost stories that terrified the damsels; and war tales of olden times that he had heard from Ianto Gwyn, or his master, Rhys, that astonished and amused his auditors, at least part of them, for Sheeny Greeg and her echo Shaan disdained to be among the number, but cried shame on him for repeating such audacious lies.
Miserly people often overshoot their mark, and it was so in this farm-house. Old Elwes would have called Morris Greeg a worthy disciple, whilst other misers of even greater note would have looked upon the farm-house and its ways as the very acme of human felicity. But “greed” begets greater evils; and when Morris was by chance called away, the girls indulged themselves in the best way they could find. Theft was largely patronized, and as we should charitably think not without very reasonable excuse. One fair, day when Morris and Sheeny had betaken themselves to a distant corn and cattle mart, the girls, as usual, commenced their preparation for a regular junketing. Twm and Moses, whom they kept at the humble distance of lowly menials, were out together, mending some gaps in the hedges, when Moses sniffing the wind that blew from the direction of the house, with the gifted nose of a dog of the chase, called out with ecstacy, “Twm, I smell pan-cake!”
“So do I, Moses,” returned our little hero, expanding his nostrils with jocular comicality, “Ha!” cried Moses, with an envious snarl, “The selfish wenches of the house are treating their dainty chops with something nice.”
“Aye!” retorted Twm, quoting from some learned Theban, “when the cat’s away the mice will play. But stop thee here, Moses, and see if I don’t bring thee a share of what is going, in five minutes.” Moses grinned and licked his lips in eager anticipation as Twm hurried off. He entered the house with a sudden startling step, and a bundle of firewood under his arm as an excuse for the intrusion. All was panic within an instant. Two of the girls dashed their jug of sweetened small beer into the pail of hog’s wash, as they heard the first rattle of the wooden latch on Twm’s entrance; Shaan turned pale as the unfried pancake before her, so great was their fear that their parents had returned in the midst of their underhand clandestine doings. “It is only that devil Twm Shon Catty,” cried Shaan, who was the first to recover from the general terror; “Never mind, girls, go and sweeten more beer, for father and mother can’t be home before night.”
“Aye, go and sweeten more beer, and let poor Moses and I have a share of your beer and pancakes,” cried Twm, pointedly eyeing a raised heap of them in a wooden platter before the fire;—“let us have a part, and we won’t tell.”
“Get along to thy work, thou saucy cur!” cried Shaan, striking him with all her strength with the hot frying-pan. “Not till I have our share to take with me,” cried our hero, making a grasping snatch at the heaped pancakes, which he bore off in spite of the united efforts of the lasses to re-capture them. His manner of bestowing them was more commendable on the score of security than of delicacy, as the greater portion was thrust into his shirt-breast and breeches pockets; off he ran over the wooden bridge and along the path through the wood.
In this chase the great heat against his breast gave him considerable pain, and almost arrested his steps, half persuaded to throw away the larded delicacy; St. Vitus never danced faster nor more spasmodically under his pains, than did our hero under the effects of his hot pancakes. They gave him shocks equal in intensity to those from the voltaic pile; in fact he may be said to have been a Salamander enduring the scorchings of heat, but with this difference.—Twm Shon Catty could not well bear them, whereas the Salamander was represented as rather enjoying them than otherwise.
But, like the Spartan boy, Twm heroically determined to bear the self-inflicted torture, and endure to the last. However, it must be confessed, to the minoration of his fame, that not having been favoured with so stoical an education as the aforesaid Lacedemonian, he yielded to nature, and ran and roared, and roared and ran, till he outran his pursuers, who returned breathless home, and he as breathless joined young Moses, where, in their secret haunt, they enjoyed the fruit of his dexterity.
The spot they occupied was one of the discoveries of Moses, before Twm’s arrival, the craggy recesses of which became the depositaries of his filching achievements, and which recurring to in after years, he called his larder. It was situated above the torrent, beside the mountain, at the extreme end of the farm—just where the wilderness had refused to yield another patch to add to former accumulation. But these gormandizing youths were at present too busily engaged to remark on either the beauties or the horrors of the scene.