Page:My people stories of the peasantry of West Wales.djvu/31

 A FATHER IN SION “Two. Others? Esau. Simon. Rachel. Sarah. Daniel. Samuel. Dear me, where shall I say they are? Six. Six of my children. Mad, mad am I? " … She laughed. “They are grown, and I didn’t know them.”

Achsah waited the third time for the wedding procession. This time she scanned each face, but only in the faces of Sadrach the Small and Miriam did she recognise her own children. She threw herself on the grass. Esau and Simon and Rachel, and Sarah and Daniel and Samuel. She remembered the circumstances attending the birth of each.… And she had been a good wife. Never once did she deny Sadrach his rights. So long as she lasted she was a woman to him.

“Sadrach the Small and Miriam,” she said.

She rose and went to the graveyard. She came to the earth under which are Essec and Shan, Sadrach's father and mother, 19