“Small is your knowledge of the Speeches,” Josi rebuked his mother.  “How go they:  ‘Sell all that you have?’ Iss-iss, all, mam fach.”

Now Mali lived in Pencoch, which is in the valley about midway between Shop Rhys and the Schoolhouse, and she rented nearly nine acres of the land which is on the hill above Sion.  Beyond the furnishings of her two-roomed house, she owned three cows, a heifer, two pigs, and fowls.  She fattened her pigs and sold them, and she sold also her heifer; and Josi went to the School of Grammar.  Mali labored hard on the land, and she got therefrom all that there was to be got; and whatever that she earned she hid in a hole in the ground.  “Handy is little money,” she murmured, “to pay for lodgings and clothes preacher, and the old scamps of boys who teach him.”  She lived on potatoes and buttermilk, and she dressed her land all the time.  People came to remark of her:  “There’s no difference between Mali Pencoch and the mess in her cow-house.”

Days, weeks, and months moved slowly; and years sped.  Josi passed from the School of Grammar to College Carmarthen, and Mali gave him all the money that she had, and prayed thus:  “Big Man bach, terrible would affairs be if I perished before the boy was all right.  Let you me keep my strength that Josi becomes as large as Bern-Davydd.  Amen.”

Even so.  Josi had a name among Students’ College, and even among ordained rulers of pulpits; and Mali went about her duties joyful and glad; it was as if the Kingdom of the Palace of White Shirts was within her.  While at her labor she mumbled praises to the Big Man for His goodness, until an awful thought came to her:  “Insulting am I to the Large One bach.  Only preachers are holy enough to stand in their pray.  Not stop must I now; go on my knees will I in the dark.”

She did not kneel on her knees for the stiffness that was in her limbs.

Her joy was increased exceedingly when Josi was called to minister unto Capel Beulah in Carmarthen, and she boasted:  “Bigger than Sion is Moriah and of lofts has not the Temple two?”

“Idle is your babbling,” one admonished her.  “Does a calf feed his mother?”

Josi heard the call.  His name grew; men and women spoke his sayings one to another, and Beulah could not contain all the people who would hear his word; and he wrote a letter to his mother:  “God has given me to wed Mary Ann, the daughter of Daniel Shop Guildhall.  Kill you a pig and salt him and send to me the meat.”

All that Josi asked Mali gave, and more; she did not abate in any of her toil for five years, when a disease laid hold on Josi and he died.  Mali cleaned her face and her hands in the Big Pistil from which you draw drinking water, and she brought forth her black garments and put them on her; and because of her age she could not weep.  The day before that her son was to be buried, she went to the house of her neighbor Sara Eye Glass, and to her she said:  “Wench nice, perished is Josi and off away am I. Console his widow fach I must.  Tell you me that you will milk my cow.”