8 LLANDDWYN 



discovered from the saddle of a bicycle. But give 

 him a distant view or aim, with great indefinite 

 things to be seen and done when one arrives, and 

 your bicycle is no longer a vulgar roadster. The 

 trees that glide backwards, and the rocks that slide 

 away in optical dissolution are not scamped. We 

 tell our pricked consciences we will come back on 

 good neat's leather to justify our calling upon each 

 of them. Not a bird or bug of them all shall escape 

 our regenerate zeal. 



But now another game is afoot. For, twelve 

 months ago one of us by hazard heard the name 

 " Llanddwyn " a mystical last place by the sea, shut 

 off by dreary miles of sand ; a place of islands, the 

 abode of Terns; and beyond, where mountain or 

 ocean failed to fill the scene, a waste of marsh as far 

 as eye might reach, where the marsh-birds called, and 

 the sea came and went unmarked by any man, so 

 lone a place it was. We had carried that talis manic 

 disyllabic inland, borne it about through winter and 

 broadening spring, taking it out at quiet times, as 

 from some mental wallet, to look upon it and turn it 

 over and wonder what manner of place indeed this 

 place should be. And now for nights past it had 

 lain, a sleepless thing, half real, half visionary, 

 beneath our pillows Llanddwyn, the haunt of 

 Terns, set between desolate marsh and distant moun- 

 tain, sand-locked, girt by the sea. Inscribe such a 

 name upon its wheels the distant, the desired and 

 your bicycle becomes a very Pegasus. 



We were therefore not over careful to observe the 

 commoner forms common as beauty that had 

 made this four mile strip of wayside woods their 



