BEGGARS ON HORSEBACK. 59 



We neared again the freely - wooded valley 

 scenery of which Wales keeps such store. Cader 

 Idris was suddenly on our left, bare and fierce and 

 coarsely magnificent : very different from our first 

 far-away glimpse of it as a pale ethereal creature 

 of the horizon — a fit companion for the most 

 heavenly clouds of sunset. It meant that Dol- 

 gelly was near, but we began to doubt that we 

 should ever reach Dolgelly. We galloped in 

 desperation through the blinding heat ; we re- 

 covered ourselves in the patches of shade. Our 

 heads swam, our throats were as dry as the tra- 

 ditional lime -burner's wig, and we thought, with 

 a kind of passion, of Irish south-westerly gales 

 bursting in floods of rain. 



We drew rein at a shady roadside spring, at 

 whose thin trickle a gipsy woman was filling an 

 earthenware jug. Here should the Tommies drink 

 their fill, while perchance a sketch was made of 

 the tilt of the gipsy waggon, half hidden in trees 

 a little back off the road. But the Tommies had 

 other views. Panic-struck, they recoiled from that 



