My Neighbors | Page 6

where he had sport with her. In the ninth year of her child, whom
she had called Abel, Anna stretched out her tongue at the schoolmaster
and took her son to the man who farmed Deinol.
"Brought have I your scarecrow," she said. "Give you to me the brown
pennies that you will pay for him."
From dawn to sunset Abel stood on a hedge, waving his arms, shouting,
and mimicking the sound of gunning. Weary of his work he vowed a
vow that he would not keep on at it. He walked to Morfa and into his
mother's cottage; his mother listened to him, then she took a stick and
beat him until he could not rest nor move with ease.
"Break him in like a frisky colt, little man bach,"[1] said Anna to the
farmer. "Know you he is the son of Satan. Have I not told how the Bad
Man came to me in my sound sleep and was naughty with me?"
[Footnote 1: Dear little man. "Bach" is the Welsh masculine for "dear";
"fach" the Welsh feminine for "dear."]
But the farmer had compassion on Abel and dealt with him kindly, and
when Abel married he let him live in Tybach--the mud-walled,
straw-thatched, two-roomed house which is midway on the hill that
goes down from Synod Inn into Morfa--and he let him farm six acres of
land.

The young man and his bride so labored that the people thereabout
were confounded; they stirred earlier and lay down later than any
honest folk; and they took more eggs and tubs of butter to market than
even Deinol, and their pigs fattened wondrously quick.
Twelve years did they live thus wise. For the woman these were years
of toil and child-bearing; after she had borne seven daughters, her sap
husked and dried up.
Now the spell of Abel's mourning was one of ill-fortune for Deinol, the
master of which was grown careless: hay rotted before it was gathered
and corn before it was reaped; potatoes were smitten by a blight, a
disease fell upon two cart-horses, and a heifer was drowned in the sea.
Then the farmer felt embittered, and by day and night he drank himself
drunk in the inns of Morfa.
Because he wanted Deinol, Abel brightened himself up: he wore
whipcord leggings over his short legs, and a preacher's coat over his
long trunk, a white and red patterned celluloid collar about his neck,
and a bowler hat on the back of his head; and his side-whiskers were
trimmed in the shape of a spade. He had joy of many widows and
spinsters, to each of whom he said: "There's a grief-livener you are,"
and all of whom he gave over on hearing of the widow of Drefach. Her
he married, and with the money he got with her, and the money he
borrowed, he bought Deinol. Soon he was freed from the hands of his
lender. He had eight horses and twelve cows, and he had oxen and
heifers, and pigs and hens, and he had twenty-five sheep grazing on his
moorland. As his birth and poverty had caused him to be scorned, so
now his gains caused him to be respected. The preacher of Capel
Dissenters in Morfa saluted him on the tramping road and in shop, and
brought him down from the gallery to the Big Seat. Even if Abel had
land, money, and honor, his vessel of contentment was not filled until
his wife went into her deathbed and gave him a son.
"Indeed me," he cried, "Benshamin his name shall be. The Large Maker
gives and a One He is for taking away."
He composed a prayer of thankfulness and of sorrow; and this prayer

he recited to the congregation which gathered at the graveside of the
woman from Drefach.
Benshamin grew up in the way of Capel Dissenters. He slept with his
father and ate apart from his sisters, for his mien was lofty. At the age
of seven he knew every question and answer in the book "Mother's
Gift," with sayings from which he scourged sinners; and at the age of
eight he delivered from memory the Book of Job at the Seiet; at that
age also he was put among the elders in the Sabbath School.
He advanced, waxing great in religion. On the nights of the Saying and
Searching of the Word he was with the cunningest men, disputing with
the preacher, stressing his arguments with his fingers, and proving his
learning with phrases from the sermons of the saintly Shones Talysarn.
If one asked him: "What are you going, Ben Abel Deinol?" he always
answered: "The errander of the White Gospel fach."
His father communed with the preacher, who said: "Pity quite sinful if
the boy is