Sara turned her seeing eye upon Mali.  “An old woman very mad you are to go two nines of miles.”

“Milk you my cow,” said Mali.  “And milk you her dry.  Butter from me the widow fach shall have.  And give ladlings of the hogshead to my pigs and scatter food for my hens.”

She tore a baston from a tree, trimmed it and blackened it with blacking, and at noon she set forth to the house of her daughter-in-law; and she carried in a basket butter, two dead fowls, potatoes, carrots, and a white-hearted cabbage, and she came to Josi’s house in the darkness which is in the morning, and it was so that she rested on the threshold; and in the bright light Mary Ann opened the door, and was astonished.  “Mam-in-law,” she said, “there’s nasty for you to come like this.  Speak what you want.  Sitting there is not respectable.  You are like an old woman from the country.”

“Come am I to sorrow,” answered Mali.  “Boy all grand was Josi bach.  Look at him now will I.”

“Talking no sense you are,” said Mary Ann.  “Why you do not see that the house is full of muster?  Will there not be many Respecteds at the funeral?”

“Much preaching shall I say?”

“Indeed, iss.  But haste about now and help to prepare food to eat.  Slow you are, female.”

Presently mourners came to the house, and when each had walked up and gazed upon the features of the dead, and when the singers had sung and the Respecteds had spoken, and while a carpenter turned screws into the coffin, Mary Ann said to Mali:  “Clear you the dishes now, and cut bread and spread butter for those who will return after the funeral.  After all have been served go you home to Pencoch.”  She drew a veil over her face and fell to weeping as she followed the six men who carried Josi’s coffin to the hearse.

Having finished, Mali took her baston and her empty basket and began her journey.  As she passed over Towy Street—­the public way which is set with stones—­she saw that many people were gathered at the gates of Beulah to witness Mary Ann’s loud lamentations at Josi’s grave.

Mali stayed a little time; then she went on, for the light was dimming.  At the hour she reached Pencoch the mown hay was dry and the people were gathering it together.  She cried outside the house of Sara Eye Glass:  “Large thanks, Sara fach.  Home am I, and like pouring water were the tears.  And there’s preaching.”  She milked her cows and fed her pigs and her fowls, and then she stepped up to her bed.  The sounds of dawn aroused her.  She said to herself:  “There’s sluggish am I. Dear-dear, rise must I in a haste, for Mary Ann will need butter to feed the baban bach that Josi gave her.”

XI

UNANSWERED PRAYERS

When Winnie Davies was let out of prison, shame pressed heavily on her feelings; and though her mother Martha and her father Tim prayed almost without ceasing, she did not come home.  It was so that one night Martha watched for her at a window and Tim prayed for her at the door of the Tabernacle, and a bomb fell upon the ground that was between them, and they were both destroyed.