Page:My people stories of the peasantry of West Wales.djvu/145

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THE WOMAN WHO SOWED INIQUITY


to her brother Joshua for the loan of thirty sovereigns. Joshua answered that he would lend her fifteen sovereigns provided she signed a bill of sale on Lancoch.

Betti hid away the money in a decanter.

Now it happened that on an afternoon Gwylim was very drunken, and he came to the decanter in which the money was hidden.

“Fiery Pool!” he shouted. “Where did you get this from? Oh, you’ve been whoring. You concubine! You slut!”

His rage was so great that he scattered the gold on the floor. Then he gathered it up and went out, and to all whom he met he groaned that a harlot had lured him and that a harlot was the mother of his children. “Did not the old mam say,” he cried, “‘Pity the bitch of a concubine snared you, boy bach’?”

In the morning of the day Betti opened the door of her house, and she saw that Gwylim was fallen at the foot of the stone

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