"Not handy are women," said Sheremiah. "Sell him to me the poor-place.
Three-fourths of the cost I give in yellow money and one-fourth
by-and-by in three years."

Having taken over Rhydwen, Sheremiah in due season sold much of his corn
and hay, some of his cattle, and many such movable things as were in his
house or employed in tillage; and he and Catrin came to abide in
Rhydwen; and they arrived with horses in carts, cows, a bull and oxen,
and their sons, Aben and Dan. As they passed Capel Sion, people who were
gathered at the roadside to judge them remarked how that Aben was blind
in his left eye and that Dan's shoulders were as high as his ears.

At the finish of a round of time Sheremiah hired out his sons and all
that they earned he took away from them; and he and Catrin toiled to
recover Rhydwen from its slovenry. After he had paid all that he owed
for the place, and after Catrin had died of dropsy, he called his sons
home.

Thereon he thrived. He was over all on the floor of Sion, even those in
the Big Seat. Men in debt and many widow-women sought him to free them,
and in freeing them he made compacts to his advantage. Thus he came to
have more cattle than Rhydwen could hold, and he bought Penlan, the farm
of eighty acres which goes up from Rhydwen to the edge of the moor, and
beyond.

In quiet seasons he and Aben and Dan dug ditches on the land of Rhydwen;
"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