Page:My people stories of the peasantry of West Wales.djvu/196

 child? Puah has passed her fruitfulness, and am I not the hope of the Bern-Davydds?” “But, dull Adam bach,” said Puah, “why do you go low for a female? Mercy me! Lissi a Bern-Davydd! Repent you now, and be a goldy boy.”

Bern-Davydd’s heart hardened against his stubborn son, and the colour of his face became that of the sun-dried walls of the quarry on the moor; and he informed God of a just punishment for those who rebel.

Soon people began to whisper that before long Adam would be a father; the whisper rose into a shout, and it was cried on the tramping way, and even at the gates of Capel Sion. Bern-Davydd and Lamech heard it, and they trembled.

The father proclaimed from the pulpit: “I have searched my soul for some sin that, unbeknown to myself, I might have committed. Did I find any? No, indeed to goodness, now, I didn’t. Yet the Big