Tops of hearses, and I saw the wheels scattering the
stones in the road, just as other wheels would have done. Then I
saw a funeral of the same character, for all the world like a real
funeral; there was the bier and the black drapery. I have seen
more than one. If a young man was to be buried there would be a
white sheet, or something that looked like one - and sometimes I
have seen a flaring candle going past.
"Once a traveller passing through the gate called out to me:
'Look! yonder is a corpse candle coming through the fields beside
the highway.' So we paid attention to it as it moved, making
apparently towards the church from the other side. Sometimes it
would be quite near the road, another time some way into the
fields. And sure enough after the lapse of a little time a body
was brought by exactly the same route by which the candle had come,
owing to the proper road being blocked up with snow.
"Another time there happened a great wonder connected with an old
man of Carmarthen, who was in the habit of carrying fish to Brecon,
Menny, and Monmouth, and returning with the poorer kind of
Gloucester cheese: my people knew he was on the road and had made
ready for him, the weather being dreadful, wind blowing and snow
drifting. Well, in the middle of the night, my daughters heard the
voice of the old man at the gate, and their mother called to them
to open it quick, and invite the old man to come in to the fire!
One of the girls got up forthwith, but when she went out there was
nobody to be seen. On the morrow, lo and behold! the body of the
old man was brought past on a couch, he having perished in the snow
on the mountain of Tre 'r Castell. Now this is the truth of the
matter."
Many wonderful feats did Tom perform connected with loading and
carrying, which acquired for him the reputation of being the best
wood carter of the south. His dexterity at moving huge bodies was
probably never equalled. Robinson Crusoe was not half so handy.
Only see how he moved a ship into the water, which a multitude of
people were unable to do.
"After keeping the gate for two or three years," says he, "I took
the lease of a piece of ground in Llandeilo Fawr and built a house
upon it, which I got licensed as a tavern for my daughters to keep.
I myself went on carrying wood as usual. Now it happened that my
employer, the merchant at Abermarlais, had built a small ship of
about thirty or forty tons in the wood about a mile and a quarter
from the river Towy, which is capable of floating small vessels as
far as Carmarthen.
