Twm’s spirit of joking was rampant within him, notwithstanding the morning’s vexations, and he determined upon having a little fun, in refreshing Moses’s memory regarding a few incidents which were best forgotten. Assuming an attitude of tremendous importance, and overwhelming authority, he commenced:
“You are the very fellow I have been long seeking. You ran away from the comfortable and very plentiful house of Morris Greeg, in Cardiganshire; after having in concert with a young scamp, named Twm Shon Catty, eaten all his pork and mutton.” Moses started and looked blue as indigo. “I’ll have thee put in stocks, and taken back to the house of that generous and most injured man,” cried Twm, in the tone of a jack-in-office.
Compassionating the perplexity of the poor devil, he caught his hand and cried, “Don’t you know me?—Twm, your former fellow-starveling.” “Well, well! who could have thought it!” cried the astonished Moses; “dear, dear, what a many good dinners you must have had to make you look so well.”
Twm assured him, he should have dinners too, if he behaved himself, but charged him to be silent as to their former acquaintance. Moses so bounced and bounded up, in token of his rapture, that Twm feared the wind would bear away the poor creature like a paper kite from him.
Poor fellow! anticipating warmth and comfort from such a proceeding, he married a very fat widow of a butcher, who was accomplished in her husband’s calling. Moses had often sought the pleasant shelter of her slaughter-house, and amusingly admired the dexterous and delicate manner in which she cut the throats, and flayed the hides off the subjects that she operated on; inasmuch that he conceived the creatures themselves ought to be delighted at being so skilfully finished. After he had wooed and won the widow, oftentimes, when she was almost broken-hearted at her failing to sell certain joints towards the close of the market-day, Moses would be in raptures, as he feelingly observed, they would eat the unsold portion themselves. Somehow their trade gradually declined, till latterly it ceased altogether, and the widow was no longer a butcher, owing, as she protested, to her husband’s being a “huge feeder,” and the mysterious disappearance of various joints that she suspected him of devouring in secret.
Where were now the lover’s despair and tears, his dedication to a life of solitude, nay, his refusal even of life? True, for some days, Twm stalked about in the neighbourhood of the “Cat and Fiddle” as if his earthly mission had been brought to a sudden termination; as if, like Othello, his occupation was gone, and there was no likelihood of any other suitable employment turning up. Alas for the consistency of the lover!—days we repeat, and not weeks nor months, much less years, of seclusion of this kind. He soon illustrated the Shaksperian adage, “Men have died, and worms have eaten them, but not for love.” But by him everything was to be done by strokes of impulse. To banish his cares, he plunged at once into intemperance; and from merely tolerating a little cheerful company, he entered the society of the greatest topers and madcaps to be found, till he emulated and outdid the highest, and became the very prince of wags and practical jokers.
He was of course recognized as the conqueror of the tremendous Dio the Devil, and the acknowledged preserver of the lady of Ystrad Feen, which, with his relation of many freaks and vagaries in England, together with the assured fact that he had been once to London, and spent a year there, gained him no inconsiderable share of celebrity.
The good-humoured Justice Prothero, he found as merry, and as much a friend as ever. “Fear not for the fair widow, boy!” would he exclaim, slapping him heartily on the back; “she’ll have thee yet, in spite of the long-nosed Prices and their pedigrees.”
To divert him from his frequent fits of melancholy, and dangerous freaks of folly among his newly-made companions at Llandovery, Prothero would keep him a week at a time under his friendly roof, and make trifling bets, to amuse him, by which freaks he secured some enjoyment for himself also.
Ready Rosser again became his antagonist in these rustic feats and stratagems. The first wager that Prothero laid, was of twenty shillings, that Twm would not by his cunning decoy a sheep out of the safe keeping of this worthy, as he was to fetch one home for butchering on the morrow; but if he succeeded, the mutton and the money would both become his own; otherwise he would forfeit that sum and resign the woolly victim to its owner. To all this our hero agreed, and prepared accordingly.