Page:My people stories of the peasantry of West Wales.djvu/29

 A FATHER IN SION union provided Old Shemmi gave to his daughter a stack of hay, a cow in calf, a heifer, a quantity of bedclothes, and four cheeses. Old Shemmi, on his part, demanded with Sadrach the Small ten sovereigns, a horse and a cart, and a bedstead. The night before the wedding Sadrach drove Achsah into the fields, and he told her how the Big Man had looked with good-will upon Sadrach the Small, and was giving him Sara Ann to wife.

What occurred in the loft over the cowshed before dawn crept in through the window with the iron bars I cannot tell you. God can. But the rising sun found Achsah crouching behind one of the hedges of the lane that brings you from Danyrefail to the tramping road, and there she stayed, her eyes peering through the foliage, until the procession came by: first Old Shemmi and Sadrach, with Sadrach the Small between them; then the 17