As we walked along together I entered into
conversation with them. They came from Dinas Mawddwy. The large
boy told me that he was the son of a man who carted mwyn or lead
ore, and the little fellow that he was the son of a shoemaker. The
latter was by far the cleverest, and no wonder, for the son of
shoemakers are always clever, which assertion should anybody doubt
I beg him to attend the examinations at Cambridge, at which he will
find that in three cases out of four the senior wranglers are the
sons of shoemakers. From this little chap I got a great deal of
information about Pen Dyn, every part of which he appeared to have
traversed. He told me amongst other things that there was a castle
upon it. Like a true son of a shoemaker, however, he was an arch
rogue. Coming to a small house with a garden attached to it in
which there were apple-trees, he stopped, whilst I went on with the
other boy, and after a minute or two came up running with a couple
of apples in his hand.
"Where did you get those apples?" said I; "I hope you did not steal
them."
He made no reply, but bit one, then making a wry face he flung it
away, and so he served the other. Presently afterwards, coming to
a side lane, the future senior wrangler, for a senior wrangler he
is destined to be, always provided he finds his way to Cambridge,
darted down it like an arrow, and disappeared.
I continued my way with the other lad, occasionally asking him
questions about the mines of Mawddwy. The information, however,
which I obtained from him was next to nothing, for he appeared to
be as heavy as the stuff which his father carted. At length we
reached a village forming a kind of semicircle on a green which
looked something like a small English common. To the east were
beautiful green hills; to the west the valley with the river
running through it, beyond which rose other green hills yet more
beautiful than the eastern ones. I asked the lad the name of the
place, but I could not catch what he said, for his answer was
merely an indistinct mumble, and before I could question him again
he left me, without a word of salutation, and trudged away across
the green.
Descending a hill I came to a bridge, under which ran a beautiful
river, which came foaming down from a gulley between two of the
eastern hills. From a man whom I met I learned that the bridge was
called Pont Coomb Linau, and that the name of the village I had
passed was Linau.
