ing nearly a mile amidst very beautiful scenery, I came to a
farm-yard where I saw several men engaged in repairing a building. This
farm-yard was in a very sequestered situation; a hill overhung it on the
west, half-way up whose side stood a farm-house to which it probably
pertained. On the north-west was a most romantic hill covered with wood
to the very top. A wild valley led, I knew not whither, to the north
between crags and the wood-covered hill. Going up to a man of
respectable appearance, who seemed to be superintending the others, I
asked him in English the way to Pentre y Dwr. He replied that I must
follow the path up the hill towards the house, behind which I should find
a road which would lead me through the wood to Pentre Dwr. As he spoke
very good English, I asked him where he had learnt it.

"Chiefly in South Wales," said he, "where they speak less Welsh than
here."

I gathered from him that he lived in the house on the hill and was a
farmer. I asked him to what place the road up the valley to the north
led.

"We generally go by that road to Wrexham," he replied; "it is a short but
a wild road through the hills."

After a little discourse on the times, which he told me were not quite so
bad for farmers as they had been, I bade him farewell.

Mounting the hill I passed round the house, as the farmer had directed
me, and turned to the west along a path on the side of the mountain. A
deep valley was on my left, and on my right above me a thick wood,
principally of oak. About a mile further on the path winded down a
descent, at the bottom of which I saw a brook and a number of cottages
beyond it.

I passed over the brook by means of a long slab laid across, and reached
the cottages. I was now as I supposed in Pentre y Dwr, and a pentre y
dwr most truly it looked, for those Welsh words signify in English the
village of the water, and the brook here ran through the village, in
every room of which its pretty murmuring sound must have been audible. I
looked about me in the hope of seeing somebody of whom I could ask a
question or two, but seeing no one, I turned to the south intending to
regain Llangollen by the way of the monastery. Coming to a cottage I saw
a woman, to all appearance very old, standing by the door, and asked her
in Welsh where I was.

"In Pentre Dwr," said she. "This house, and those yonder," pointing to
the cottages past which I had come, "are Pentre y Dwr. There is,
how