Page:My people stories of the peasantry of West Wales.djvu/190

 for the mercies of the hour, and we’ll go to bed,” this latter being the fashion the household of Bern-Davydd had of spending the last wakeful moments of the eve of the Sabbath. The transparent china lamp on the tinsel-draped mantelpiece lit up the group on the hearth: Bern-Davydd, a loosely-woven rope of whitish hair like a coil of sheep’s wool which has been caught in a barbed wire, and exposed many days to the weather, extending from ear to ear ; Lamech, the ball of his small nose glittering against swarthy skin and bushy black beard and moustache: Puah, her feet resting on the fender, and the tuft of red hair on the right side of her mouth shivering like boar’s hairs between the fingers of an ancient cobbler as she turned over the leaves of the book she was not reading.

Adam unravelled his leather boot-laces, speaking the meanwhile: “Dear folk, a sober thing has