Page:My people stories of the peasantry of West Wales.djvu/125

 the pigsty and on the inside of the door of the cowshed he contrived a trickish bolt.

On the afternoon of the second Sunday after his coming he fondled Dinah and made mischief with her, and when they had committed their sin, the woman was revengeful, and she cried to him: “Go your way! Take to the dunghill ! You lout ! For sure I will shout your wickedness.” She seized his head and clawed his scalp, until the tramp’s hair was dyed red.

But Michael understood the ways of women, and Dinah, far from divulging what had taken place, went out in the darkness of that night, and when she had secured the door she laid with him on a little straw spread on the floor of the cow-stall.

In the ripeness of time Dinah sorely repented herself, and was much shamed; she drew in the seams of her garments, and pressed herself as butter is pressed into an over-full cask.