Page:My people stories of the peasantry of West Wales.djvu/143

 it, and it is named Avon Towy because that river is the distance of a field beyond it. A year after her marriage Betti came to Manteg with her child, and she magnified brazenly the fortune of her husband. But she did not say anything of the occasions that he had come home drunk, or of the times when he had struck her with the ring end of his razor strop; nor did she show to any one the sore that was on her left breast.

The man Gwylim was foolish in his drink. He backed a bill for twenty sovereigns, and when one came to redeem it he had nothing with which to pay the price. He went to his father's house and said how this and that evil had befallen him.

“Give you the boy bach the money,” said Silah to her husband Tim. "Give you him the money. This is not his fault, Little Tim. Is he not wedded to a slothful woman?” Old Silah loved her son, and she