ying her hand on the bowl, and as
she spoke she too stuck fast, and was not able to utter a word. Then
thunder was heard and a veil of darkness descended upon them, and the
castle vanished and they with it.

When Kicva, the wife of Pryderi, found that neither her husband nor his
mother returned to her, she was in such sorrow that she cared not
whether she lived or died. Manawyddan was grieved also in his heart, and
said to her:

'It is not fitting that we should stay here, for we have lost our dogs
and cannot get food. Let us go into England--it is easier for us to live
there.' So they set forth.

'What craft wilt thou follow?' asked Kicva as they went along.

'I shall make shoes as once I did,' replied he; and he got all the
finest leather in the town and caused gilded clasps to be made for the
shoes, till everyone flocked to buy, and all the shoemakers in the town
were idle and banded together in anger to kill him. But luckily
Manawyddan got word of it, and he and Kicva left the town one night and
proceeded to Narberth, taking with him a sheaf of wheat, which he sowed
in three plots of ground. And while the wheat was growing up, he hunted
and fished, and they had food enough and to spare. Thus the months
passed until the harvest; and one evening Manawyddan visited the
furthest of his fields of wheat; and saw that it was ripe.

'To-morrow I will reap this,' said he; but on the morrow when he went to
reap the wheat he found nothing but the bare straw.

Filled with dismay he hastened to the second field, and there the corn
was ripe and golden.

'To-morrow I will reap this,' he said, but on the morrow the ears had
gone, and there was nothing but the bare straw.

'Well, there is still one field left,' he said, and when he looked at
it, it was still fairer than the other two. 'To-night I will watch
here,' thought he, 'for whosoever carried off the other corn will in
like manner take this, and I will know who it is.' So he hid himself and
waited.

The hours slid by, and all was still, so still that Manawyddan well-nigh
dropped asleep. But at midnight there arose the loudest tumult in the
world, and peeping out he beheld a mighty host of mice, which could
neither be numbered nor measured. Each mouse climbed up a straw till it
bent down with its weight, and then it bit off one of the ears, and
carried it away, and there was not one of the straws that had not got a
mouse to it.

Full of wrath he rushed at the mice,