Page:My people stories of the peasantry of West Wales.djvu/55

 THE WAY OF THE EARTH the fripperies of the heathen Church, will embrace them in Death.

The land attached to Penrhos was changed from sterile moorland into a fertile garden by Simon and Beca. Great toil went to the taming of these ten acres of heather into the most fruitful soil in the district. Sometimes now Simon drags himself out into the open and complains when he sees his garden; and he calls Beca to look how the fields are going back to heatherland. And Beca will rise from her chair and feel her way past the bed which stands against the wooden partition, and as she touches with her right hand the ashen post that holds up the forehead of the house she knows she is facing the fields, and she too will groan, for her strength and pride are mixed with the soil.

“Sober serious, little Simon,” she says, “this is the way of the earth, man bach.” But she means that it is the way of mortal flesh … of her daughter Sara