Hitherto farewell had been slightly said, with a few backward looks of good feeling, a few civil wishes for an indefinite return. But at Bettwys, for the first time, and perhaps also because it was--of this vagrant expedition--so near the last, parting gave pain. Turning on the face of a hill we looked back over the valley and across the flitting showers to the peaks of Snowdon and Moel Siabod, a retrospect to be remembered and thirstily to be desired in other summers. Darkly and greenly the woods sank into every cleft, or rose with the piled-up landscape till the cold breast of Snowdon was half hidden behind them. A river, whose name is quite immaterial, plunged uproariously down to the five crooked arches of Pont-y-Pair bridge in Bettwys, then, finding itself suddenly in good society, pulled itself together and swam tense and flat round a curve to present itself decorously to what I think we are safe in asserting to be the river Conway. It was true that half-pay generals and forlorn honeymoon couples haunted the bridge and hung round the post-office, that “well-appointed conveyances” were daily braying forth with horns the multitudinous entry of the tourist, also that the glass was falling; none the less we should thankfully have turned the Tommies down the hill again and remained without purpose or limit at Bettwys. Then, indeed, might many periods have been instructively framed around the names of the Miner’s Bridge, the Swallow Falls, and Dolwyddelan Castle, all of which the guide-book assured us with chaste esteem were “well worthy of a visit.” All that now remained was to turn away from the parapet of the wooded precipice, from whose edge we were looking back, and pace lingering forth towards Corwen.
[Illustration: “_The parapet of the wooded precipice, from whose edge we were looking back._”]
A stertorous sound began presently to be distinguishable from the hoarse note of rushing water in the deep places of the glen: then followed a tremor of the ground, lastly a traction-engine, advancing upon us like Behemoth throned on mill-wheels, opulent of smoke, with a clanging retinue of trucks. I felt in anticipation the mud ooze again through the seams of my gloves, as it had oozed last night, but the gate of a villa was suddenly and miraculously raised up on our left hand. Miss O’Flannigan was off, and had opened one-half with a celerity which suggested long practice in the hunting-field, and we burst through into the shadow of tall evergreens, tearing out a hold-all buckle in an encounter with the gate-post. We were startlingly confronted inside by an old lady in a mushroom hat, carrying a spud and garden-basket, and wearing an expression of complete and unaffected amazement, which, considering all things, and especially the fact that Miss O’Flannigan and I had fallen into maniac laughter, was a pardonable lapse of good breeding. Pointing to the traction-engine, we endeavoured to explain ourselves; but the chilly calm with which the Tommies regarded it, as it lumbered past the gate, was so painfully at variance with our representations, that it seemed better to retire, waving hysterical apologies. The old lady stirred neither hand nor foot throughout the occurrence, and for all we know may have been a rustic detail added, in wax, by a proprietor of a realistic turn.