with a sluggish motion in harmony with the lifeless
scene. There, if a weedy-roofed hut do appear, (detected by its thin
feeble smoke column) or the shepherd who tenants it should show his
solitary figure in the distance, the only upright object where is not
one tree-trunk, neither the home of man nor man's appearance lessens the
sense of almost savage solitude; the one so lonely, not a smoke-wreath
being visible all round, beside; the other, as he loiters by, watching
some sheep on some distant bank, so shy and wild-looking, and, to
appearance, so melancholy, so forlorn. Meanwhile, as we "plod our weary
way," some dip in the wavy round of olive-hued lumpish mountains, or an
abrupt huge chasm of awful rocks, each side being almost perpendicular,
startles the traveller with a far-down prospect of some sunshiny, rich,
leafy, valley region, at once showing at what a bleak elevation he has
been roaming so long, and tantalizing him with the contrast of that far,
far off, low, luring landscape, rendering more irksome than before the
dead, heathery desert, interminably undulating before, behind, and all
round him.

The little farm whither old Bevan had retired, stood high in such a
desert as this, on the very verge of such a mountain-portal, (a _bwlch_,
pronounced boolch, the Welsh call it,) an antique stone cottage, hanging
like a nest on one of the side banks, dismal itself, but all that under
world of pastoral pleasantness below, in full though dim perspective. A
premature decay is always visible on these kind of wild, weather-beaten
homes, in the torn thatch; the walls tinged with green, and generally
propped to resist the effects of the powerful winds. If white-washed,
which they really are, broad streaks of green are visible, from the
frequent heavy rains, tinged by the mosses and weeds of the roof. The
clouds, attracted by the heights, career on the strong blast, so low and
close, as often to shut up the dingy human nest in a dreary day of its
own, while all below is blue serene.

To this melancholy abode, its few rustic chattels still standing there,
left since the death of its tenant, Winifred toiled up by a steep, wild,
but well-known track, but found not father, mother, or living thing,
except one, so much in unison with the wild melancholy of the scene, as
to exalt it almost to horror. This was a wretched idiot man, dressed in
female attire, perfectly harmless, and kept, as a parish pauper, at an
adjacent farm. H