"But, suppose I did, is there nobody at the Abbey or near it that could give me a night's lodging?" The landlord stared with a keen expression of wonder,--and answered, with some reserve, "Why who should there be but the owls, and in summer time may be a few bats?"
"Well, perhaps I shall find a lodging somewhere in the neighbourhood: meantime I would thank you to put me into the nearest road."
"Why, that's sooner said than done: its a d---d awkward cross-country road, and there's few in this country can hit it. But the best way for you will be to keep right over the shoulder of yonder hill, and then bear away under the hills to your right, till you come to the old gallows of Pont-ar-Diawl: and there you must look about for somebody able to put you in the way."
"An old gallows! Surely you can't have much need of a standing gallows in a country so thinly peopled as this?"
"Why no, master; we don't make much use of it: not but there has been some fine lads in my time that have taken their last look of day-light on that gallows; and here and there you'll meet with an old body amongst these hills that has the heart-ache when she looks that way. But the gallows is partly built of stone: they say King Edward I. built it, to hang the Welsh harpers on; by the dozen at once, I have heard say. Well, all's one to you and me: by the score if it pleased him.
"But now-a-days I suppose it will not have many customers from the harpers: what little business it has will lie chiefly among those 'odd sort of folks from the sea-side,'--eh, landlord?"
"Why master, as to that, as long as folks do me no harm, it's never my way to say any thing ill of them. Now and then, may be, I hear a noise of winter nights in my barn: and my wife and daughters would have me to lock the barn-door before it's dark. But what? as I often says to them; it's better to have folks making free with one's straw, and now and then an armful of hay for a horse or so, than to have one's house burnt over one's head one of these long winter nights. And, to give the devil his due, I don't think they're much in my debt: for often enough I find a bottle or two of prime old wine left behind them."
"So then, on the whole, these sea-side gentry are not uncivil: and, if it's they that tenant Ap Gauvon, perhaps they'll show a little hospitality to a wanderer like myself?"
"Aye, but that's more than I'll answer for. I know little about Ap Gauvon: it's a place I never was at--nor ever will be, please God. Why should any man go and thrust his hand into a hornet's nest, where there's nothing to be got?"
"But landlord, if these smugglers come and visit you, I think they couldn't be angry with you for returning the visit."