"so that," he said, "my creatures shall not perish of thirst."

Of a sudden a sickness struck him, and in the hush which is sometimes
before death, he summoned to him his sons. "Off away am I to the
Palace," he said.

"Large will be the shout of joy among the angels," Aben told him.

"And much weeping there will be in Sion," said Dan. "Speak you a little
verse for a funeral preach."

"Cease you your babblings, now, indeed," Sheremiah demanded. "Born first
you were, Aben, and you get Rhydwen. And you, Dan, Penlan."

"Father bach," Aben cried, "not right that you leave more to me than
Dan."

"Crow you do like a cuckoo," Dan admonished his brother. "Wise you are,
father. Big already is your giving to me."

Aben looked at the window and he beheld a corpse candle moving outward
through the way of the gate. "Religious you lived, father Sheremiah, and
religious you put on a White Shirt." Then Aben spoke of the sight he had
seen.

The old man opened his lips, counseling: "Hish, hish, boys. Break you
trenches in Penlan, Dan. Poor bad are farms without water. More than
everything is water." He died, and his sons washed him and clothed him
in a White Shirt of the dead, and clipped off his long beard, which
ceasing to grow, shall not entwine his legs and feet and his arms and
hands on the Day of Rising; and they bowed their heads in Sion for the
full year.

Dan and Aben lived in harmony. They were not as brothers, but as
strangers; neighborly and at peace. They married wives, by whom they had
children, and they sat in the Big Seat in Sion. They mowed their hay and
reaped their corn at separate periods, so that one could help the other;
if one needed the loan of anything he would borrow it from his brother;
if one's heifer strayed into the pasture of the other, the other would
say: "The Big Man will make the old grass grow." On the Sabbath they and
their children walked as in procession to Sion.

In accordance with his father's word, Dan dug ditches in Penlan; and
against the barnyard--which is at the forehead of his house--water
sprang up, and he caused it to run over his water-wheel into his pond.

Now there fell upon this part of Cardiganshire a season of exceeding
drought. The face of the earth was as the face of a cancerous man. There
was no water in any of the ditches of Rhydwen and none in those of
Penlan. But the spring which Dan had found continued to yield, and from
it Aben's wife took away water in pitchers a