t when we looked out over the valley the prospect was not
very encouraging, for it seemed to me that if the sun came out hot it
would dry up that river, and Jone might not be willing to wait until
the next heavy rain.

While we was at Chedcombe I read the "Maid of Sker," because its scenes
are laid in the Bristol Channel, about the coast near where we was, and
over in Wales. And when the next morning we went down to the boat which
we was going to take our day's trip in, and I saw the man who was to
row us, David Llewellyn popped straight into my mind.

This man was elderly, with gray hair, and a beard under his chin, with
a general air of water and fish. He was good-natured and sociable from
the very beginning. It seemed a shame that an old man should row two
people so much younger than he was, but after I had looked at him
pulling at his oars for a little while, I saw that there was no need
of pitying him.

It was a good day, with only one or two drizzles in the morning, and we
had not gone far before I found that the Wye was more of a river than I
thought it was, though never any bigger than a creek. It was just about
warm enough for a boat trip, though the old man told us there had been
a "rime" that morning, which made me think of the "Ancient Mariner."
The more the boatman talked and made queer jokes, the more I wanted to
ask him his name; and I hoped he would say David Llewellyn, or at least
David, and as a sort of feeler I asked him if he had ever seen a
coracle. "A corkle?" said he. "Oh, yes, ma'am, I've seen many a one and
rowed in them."

I couldn't wait any longer, and so I asked him his name. He stopped
rowing and leaned on his oars and let the boat drift. "Now," said he,
"if you've got a piece of paper and a pencil I wish you would listen
careful and put down my name, and if you ever know of any other people
in your country coming to the River Wye, I wish you would tell them my
name, and say I am a boatman, and can take them down the river better
than anybody else that's on it. My name is Samivel Jones. Be sure
you've got that right, please--Samivel Jones. I was born on this river,
and I rowed on it with my father when I was a boy, and I have rowed on
it ever since, and now I am sixty-five years old. Do you want to know
why this river is called the Wye? I will tell you. Wye means crooked,
so this river is called the Wye because it is crooked. Wye, the crooked
river."

There was no doubt about the old