Come, sister, let us go and fetch the gentleman water." They ran into the house and presently returned, the girl bearing a pan of water.

After I had drunk I gave each of the children a penny, and received in return from each a diolch or thanks.
"Can either of you read ?" "Neither one nor the other." "Can your father and mother read ?" "My father cannot, my mother can a little." "Are there books in the house ?" "There are not." "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.