h in a voice that was higher
than the continued muttering of Olwen. "Have you no regard for the
living? The dead is dead. And you made too much of Jennie. You spoiled
her...."

On a sudden Olwen ceased, and she strode up to the bed and thrust her
scissors into Lisbeth's breast.

II

ACCORDING TO THE PATTERN

On the eve of a Communion Sunday Simon Idiot espied Dull Anna washing
her feet in the spume on the shore; he came out of his hiding-place and
spoke jestingly to Anna and enticed her into Blind Cave, where he had
sport with her. In the ninth year of her child, whom she had called
Abel, Anna stretched out her tongue at the schoolmaster and took her son
to the man who farmed Deinol.

"Brought have I your scarecrow," she said. "Give you to me the brown
pennies that you will pay for him."

From dawn to sunset Abel stood on a hedge, waving his arms, shouting,
and mimicking the sound of gunning. Weary of his work he vowed a vow
that he would not keep on at it. He walked to Morfa and into his
mother's cottage; his mother listened to him, then she took a stick and
beat him until he could not rest nor move with ease.

"Break him in like a frisky colt, little man bach,"[1] said Anna to the
farmer. "Know you he is the son of Satan. Have I not told how the Bad
Man came to me in my sound sleep and was naughty with me?"

[Footnote 1: Dear little man. "Bach" is the Welsh masculine for "dear";
"fach" the Welsh feminine for "dear."]

But the farmer had compassion on Abel and dealt with him kindly, and
when Abel married he let him live in Tybach--the mud-walled,
straw-thatched, two-roomed house which is midway on the hill that goes
down from Synod Inn into Morfa--and he let him farm six acres of land.

The young man and his bride so labored that the people thereabout were
confounded; they stirred earlier and lay down later than any honest
folk; and they took more eggs and tubs of butter to market than even
Deinol, and their pigs fattened wondrously quick.

Twelve years did they live thus wise. For the woman these were years of
toil and child-bearing; after she had borne seven daughters, her sap
husked and dried up.

Now the spell of Abel's mourning was one of ill-fortune for Deinol, the
master of which was grown careless: hay rotted before it was gathered
and corn before it was reaped; potatoes were smitten by a blight, a
disease fell upon two cart-horses, and a heifer was drowned in the sea.
Then the farmer fe