ELAN LAKES— WILD SOUTH WALES 



character. She was a spinster even then advanced 

 in years, the daughter of a departed sheep farmer, and 

 inheritor and mistress of all his flocks. She ruled her 

 many shepherds with the firmest of hands, and no 

 dealer I believe in Llandovery or any other market was 

 ever known to get the better of her. The graces of life 

 had no great part in her scheme of it. She had no use 

 for frills of any sort. Warm as she was in this world's 

 goods, she apparently wasted nothing in superfluities 

 either within or without doors. Her demeanour sug- 

 gested the Cheviots or the Lammermuirs rather than 

 the demonstrative courtesy of the South Welsh hill- 

 folk. She was tremendously proud, I think, in a grim, 

 silent way of her unique reputation. Welsh was her 

 natural tongue, as it is of every one in the heart and 

 west of these mountains, and I don't think she had 

 very much English. Her front yard was always 

 seething with collies of the most truculent and menac- 

 ing kind, and on my first call I felt thankful to be on 

 the back of a horse. I have been there for tea on 

 one occasion, a liberty I should never have ventured 

 but with a local companion who had the honour of 

 her acquaintance — an honour, I must say, she acknow- 

 ledged with such economy of words that if I hadn't 

 known they were old neighbours, as things count here, 

 and on good terms, I should have opined that there 

 was some hereditary feud smouldering. We had tea 

 on the kitchen table while she busied herself about 

 things unconnected with us and that most bachelor 

 ladies with five thousand sheep would have deputed 

 to an understudy. But perhaps it was these very 

 qualities that made her great and even feared among 



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