[1] Pronounced “Reece.”
[CHAPTER III
THE DIPPING-POOL]
A GROUP of men, sitting round a blazing fire, some on heavy wooden chairs, some on a long settle, looked up as he entered. All were smoking. Those on the chairs gave them a deferential push back when they saw the new-comer.
“Very damp night outside,” observed Rhys, nodding to the company.
“Indeed, so it be, sir. Come you in here near to the warm-ship, Master Walters,” said a jolly-looking individual who sat closest to the chimney-corner, pointing invitingly to his next neighbour’s chair. His next neighbour, an undersized man with a goat’s beard, called Johnny Watkins, jumped up obediently.
“Thanks, thanks, don’t disturb yourself,” said Rhys politely, seating himself in the corner of the settle, “this will do very well for me.”
The fire-place round which they were gathered was the broad kitchen range of the Dipping-Pool Inn, in which modest establishment bar and kitchen were one and the same place. Being situated in such an out-of-the-way spot, it was too little frequented by any but the few travellers over the mountain to make any addition profitable, Hosea Evans, the landlord, whose sign hung outside, entertaining his guests comfortably in the kitchen. He was assisted in his business by one Mary Vaughan, who stood in what would have been the character of barmaid in a larger hostelry, and brought to the company such drinks as were called for from the inner room in which she sat. Within the memory of a few old people, the dried-up bed of the brook, which made a rough path to the house, had been a swift stream running into a pool before the door. This had been used for sheep-washing at one time, and Hosea, when he took the little inn, had not troubled himself to invent a new name for it; so, though its appropriateness was not apparent, the “Dipping-Pool” it remained.
It was an unpretending, whitewashed house, squatting in the green creek as though ashamed to be seen within range of the public eye. Many people thought that it had reason to be so, as its present proprietor had borne an indifferent character for honesty in certain small ways, and had left Llangarth, where he had formerly lived, on account of the inconvenient attitude of local opinion. He was a thick-set, smiling man, of florid complexion, round whose broad face the red hair, beard, and whiskers formed such a perfect halo, that now, as he entered the kitchen and his head appeared over a wooden screen standing at the door, it produced something of the effect of a sunrise.
“Well, Mr. Walters,” he began, when he had shut the door of the inner room carefully and sat down cumbrously beside Rhys, “and how be you minded to do?”