dare say the story is
common enough, but the sight of the woman, and her few words had
impressed me. She had been the beauty of Pen-Morfa; had been in service;
had been taken to London by the family whom she served; had come down in
a year or so, back to Pen-Morfa; her beauty gone into that sad, wild,
despairing look which I saw; and she about to become a mother. Her
father had died during her absence, and left her a very little money;
and after her child was born she took the little cottage where I saw
her, and made a scanty living by the produce of her bees. She associated
with no one. One event had made her savage and distrustful to her kind.
She kept so much aloof that it was some time before it became known that
her child was deformed, and had lost the use of its lower limbs. Poor
thing! when I saw the mother, it had been for fifteen years bedridden;
but go past when you would, in the night, you saw a light burning; it
was often that of the watching mother, solitary and friendless, soothing
the moaning child; or you might hear her crooning some old Welsh air, in
hopes to still the pain with the loud, monotonous music. Her sorrow was
so dignified, and her mute endurance and her patient love won her such
respect, that the neighbors would fain have been friends; but she kept
alone and solitary. This is a most true story. I hope that woman and her
child are dead now, and their souls above.

Another story which I heard of these old primitive dwellings I mean to
tell at somewhat greater length:

There are rocks high above Pen-Morfa; they are the same that hang over
Tre-Madoc, but near Pen-Morfa they sweep away, and are lost in the
plain. Every where they are beautiful. The great sharp ledges which
would otherwise look hard and cold, are adorned with the
brightest-colored moss, and the golden lichen. Close to, you see the
scarlet leaves of the crane's-bill, and the tufts of purple heather,
which fill up every cleft and cranny; but in the distance you see only
the general effect of infinite richness of color, broken here and there
by great masses of ivy. At the foot of these rocks come a rich verdant
meadow or two; and then you are at Pen-Morfa. The village well is sharp
down under the rocks. There are one or two large, sloping pieces of
stone in that last field, on the road leading to the well, which are
always slippery; slippery in the summer's heat, almost as much as in the
frost of winter, when some little glassy stre