"No Bible?"

"There is no book at all."

"Do you go to church?"

"We do not."

"To chapel?"

"In fine weather."

"Are you happy?"

"When there is bread in the house and no cryd we are all happy."

"Farewell to you, children."

"Farewell to you, gentleman!" exclaimed both.

"I have learnt something," said I, "of Welsh cottage life and feeling
from that poor sickly child."

I had passed the first and second of the hills which stood on the left,
and a huge long mountain on the right which confronted both, when a young
man came down from a gully on my left hand, and proceeded in the same
direction as myself. He was dressed in a blue coat and corduroy
trowsers, and appeared to be of a condition a little above that of a
labourer. He shook his head and scowled when I spoke to him in English,
but smiled on my speaking Welsh, and said: "Ah, you speak Cumraeg: I
thought no Sais could speak Cumraeg." I asked him if he was going far.

"About four miles," he replied.

"On the Bangor road?"

"Yes," said he; "down the Bangor road."

I learned that he was a carpenter, and that he had been up the gully to
see an acquaintance--perhaps a sweetheart. We passed a lake on our right
which he told me was called Llyn Ogwen, and that it abounded with fish.
He was very amusing, and expressed great delight at having found an
Englishman who could speak Welsh; "it will be a thing to talk of," said
he, "for the rest of my life." He entered two or three cottages by the
side of the road, and each time he came out I heard him say: "I am with a
Sais who can speak Cumraeg." At length we came to a gloomy-looking
valley trending due north; down this valley the road ran, having an
enormous wall of rocks on its right and a precipitous hollow on the left,
beyond which was a wall equally high as the other one. When we had
proceeded some way down the road my guide said. "You shall now hear a
wonderful echo," and shouting "taw, taw," the rocks replied in a manner
something like the baying of hounds. "Hark to the dogs!" exclaimed my
companion. "This pass is called Nant yr ieuanc gwn, the pass of the
young dogs, because when one shouts it answers with a noise resembling
the crying of hounds."

The sun was setting when we came to a small village at the bottom of the
pass. I asked my companion its name. "Ty yn y maes," he replied, adding
as he stopped before a small cottage that he was going no farther, as he
dwelt there.

"Is ther