54 BEGGARS ON HORSEBACK. 



covering as it did the fact that the unexplained 

 guests of the hotel, in varied and immature cos- 

 tumes, were exulting at every upper window, and 

 that from the window of the apartment that had 

 so recently been ours — the room that we had been 

 told belonged to Mr Willy Griffith — waved the 

 white beard of the old man of the bridge and the 

 church. Was he Mr Willy Griffith ? 



W^e leave the problem, together with the raison 

 d'etre of the female tourists, to be dealt with by 

 future visitors to the Griffith Arms, of whose 

 company we are not likely to be. 



It is not necessary to enter into details of the 

 half-hour that followed. Let it be understood 

 that I mended my strap with my pocket-hand- 

 kerchief, that Miss O'Flannigan did her hair with 

 three surviving hairpins, and that we received 

 all possible assistance from the horse-flies. 



The midsummer sun in the heart of the Welsh 

 mountains is bad to beat. It was blazing when 

 we began the long ascent from the valley as 

 though it had been at it all night — as, indeed, I 



