Page:My neighbours (IA myneighbours00evaniala).pdf/40



and into his mother's cottage; his mother listened to him, then she took a stick and beat him until he could not rest nor move with ease.

"Break him in like a frisky colt, little man bach," said Anna to the farmer. "Know you he is the son of Satan. Have I not told how the Bad Man came to me in my sound sleep and was naughty with me?"

But the farmer had compassion on Abel and dealt with him kindly, and when Abel married he let him live in Tybach—the mud-walled, straw-thatched, two-roomed house which is midway on the hill that goes down from Synod Inn into Morfa—and he let him farm six acres of land.

The young man and his bride so laboured that the people thereabout were confounded; they stirred earlier and lay down later than any honest folk; and they took more eggs and tubs of butter to