l, or recalling it from our
childhood, to strike away on foot for some of the mountain wildernesses.

Of these, in those days, nobody knew much more than that they were high
and steep, and slippery and dangerous, and much to be shunned by all
sensible people who liked a nice fire and the right side of the window.
So that when we shouldered staves with knapsacks flapping heavily, all
the wiser sort looked on us as marching off to Bedlam.

In the morning, as we were starting, we set our watches by the old
school dial, as I have cause to remember well. And we staked half a
crown, in a sporting manner, each on his own watch to be the truer by
sun upon our way back again. And thus; we left those ancient walls and
the glancing of the river, and stoutly took the Welshpool road, dreading
nought except starvation.

Although in those days I was not by any means a cripple, George was far
stronger of arm and leg, having always been famous, though we made
no fuss about such things then, for running and jumping, and lifting
weights, and using the boxing-gloves and the foils. A fine, brave fellow
as ever lived, with a short, straight nose and a resolute chin, he
touched the measuring-bar quite fairly at seventy-four inches, and
turned the scales at fourteen stone and a quarter. And so, as my
chattels weighed more than his (by means of a rough old easel and
material for rude sketches), he did me a good turn now and then by
changing packs for a mile or two. And thus we came in four days' march
to Aber-Aydyr, a village lying under Cader Idris.

CHAPTER III.

If any place ever lay out of the world, and was proud of itself for
doing so, this little village of Aber-Aydyr must have been very near it.
The village was built, as the people expressed it, of thirty cottages,
one public-house, one shop universal, and two chapels. The torrent of
the Aydyr entered with a roar of rapids, and at the lower end departed
in a thunder of cascades. The natives were all so accustomed to live in
the thick of this watery uproar that, whenever they left their beloved
village to see the inferior outer world, they found themselves as deaf
as posts till they came to a weir or a waterfall. And they told us that
in the scorching summer of the year 1826 the river had failed them so
that for nearly a month they could only discourse by signs; and they
used to stand on the bridge and point at the shrunken rapids, and
stop their ears to exclude that horrible