Page:My people stories of the peasantry of West Wales.djvu/265

 Sad is my lot. Disorderly is the female, and Matilda says this and that about me to my discredit.”

He brayed his woe also in the narrow Roman road which takes you past the Schoolhouse and in the path that cuts over Gorse Penparc into the field wherein stands Rhiw. At an early hour in the morning Matilda said to her mother: “Mam now, the cows fach are lowing to be milked,” and receiving no answer she looked into Hannah’s face and examined her body, and she saw that the woman was cold dead, whereupon she went out and into the stable, in the loft of which Evan slept, and cried up to him: “Father bach, do you stir yourself. Old mam has gone to wear a White Shirt.” While Sara Ann was clothing herself in mournful raiment Evan put on his clogs and went to the house of Lias the Carpenter, and to Lias he said: “The nice man, for why you don’t know there is a desolate