Page:My people stories of the peasantry of West Wales.djvu/146



steps, his head resting on the first step. She carried him into the house and took off his clothes and put him into bed. Before the end of the day Betti thanked God that paralysis had gripped him. Two months later a hearse took away his body to the consecrated ground where Silah and Tim will some time join him. He will rest between them.

Betti, a widow woman with five children, returned to Manteg; and in Manteg none said to her “How be things with you, Betti fach?” for is it not known that the woman who sows iniquity shall reap the fruits thereof?

Out of the wreckage she had saved enough to provide Lancoch with a poor cow, a couple of pigs, and a few hens. She tilled the soil as well as a woman without implements can till it. But stray cattle wandered into her fields because of the broken hedges, and late in the springtime a herd of cows spent a night in her garden.