This question of assessment had already raised another question, which at first seemed a small one, but swelled afterwards into ominous proportions. When the rumours of those two towering new hotels had first begun to circulate, it had been a gentle and stimulating mental exercise to place, in fancy, these palaces on this spot or that. Among other suggestions, the vacant plot of land adjacent to the Kerrs' Hafod Unos had been mentioned as a fitting site for one of them. Hereupon folk had begun to ask one another: What about the Kerrs' title?

Hitherto they had not thought of this. The four brothers had planted themselves there when all about had been a waste of sand, had since taken firm root, and there two of them still remained. But between such a squatting eight or nine years ago, and a sitting tight now that everything had gone up a hundredfold in value, was an immense difference. To this difference, moreover, was now added the evil repute in which Tommy Kerr lived. Ned, the alder-cutter, they would have accepted; they could live with Ned; but his brother, besides being in his unpleasant person a public nuisance, was beginning to appear a setter-back of the fingers of History's clock, a mongrel in their fine new manger, a thorn in the side of that lusty young Welsh Giantess whose figure was now one of the familiar sights on a thousand hoardings in the North. The invisible odour of stale beer-fumes in which he moved poisoned the air of the Promenade, and, though he certainly did his best to remedy this as far as the staleness was concerned (invariably beginning the day with pints and ending it with quarts), that did not improve matters in the long run.

As long as Tommy Kerr was merely locked up once in a while for drunkenness, he himself paid no heed to the whispers that had begun to gather about him. He could sleep as heavily and happily in a cell as in his own Hafod. Nor were his eyes at once opened even when an inspector appeared at the Hafod and began to ask questions about its sanitation—which, by the way, was of a low order. But his brother Ned began to "study," as he called it, and the result of his studying was that he said one day to Tommy, "They'll be wanting to be shut o' you and me, Tommy."

Tommy was in the act of wiping out a greasy frying-pan with a piece of old newspaper. He stopped suddenly. After a pause, "Eh?" he said.... "D'ye mean purr us out?"

"We're a bit i' t' road to my way o' thinking," Ned replied, sinking back into his arm-chair again and closing his eyes.

He had taken badly to heart the deaths of his brothers Harry and Sam; indeed he had not been the same man since. He frequently walked over to Sarn churchyard, sat on a flat tombstone near his brothers' grave, and smoked and spat; he was "studying" about a stone for them. Intermittently he talked about carving this with his own hands, but he delayed to do so. All the work he now did was to doze in a street-watch-man's hut, with a two-days-old newspaper on his knee and a firebasket in front of him set sideways on the wind. He was no longer the beer-drinker he had been. "Think ye?" said Tommy, after another silence. "But we donnot want to be purred out," he added resuming the wiping of the frying-pan, though more slowly.

And as it seemed to be a condition of their remaining in their Hafod unmolested that they should make a show of satisfying the sanitary inspector's demands, they overhauled their drainage system and gave it the minimum of attention it demanded.

Then one day an offer was made them, which was also an admission. It was an offer of compensation and of another dwelling elsewhere, and the admission apparently was that their title was a good one. Ned was for accepting the offer, and accepted it would probably have been but for a circumstance that Tommy discovered only in a roundabout way. He was congratulated one morning in the "Marine" Tap on having escaped ejectment. This was the first he had heard of ejectment. He asked a few questions, and soon after went out for a walk.

Ejectment! Apparently they had been considering his ejectment, had found it for some reason or other not to be feasible, and had substituted the offer of compensation....

Then, while this offer was still neither accepted nor rejected, something else came to Tommy Kerr's ears. This was that the sites, not of one, but of both the new hotels, were at last decided on. As a matter of fact, this choice was now almost a foregone conclusion. Next to Gardd Street, which ran parallel with the shore, Pontnewydd Street, in which lay the Hafod, was becoming the principal street of the town. It ran from the shore to Pritchard's Corner, was prolonged past that to the new station, and was the main thoroughfare for landaus and wagonettes off to the mountains. The hotels were to be built one on either side of the Hafod, not actually adjoining it, but not more than a couple of strides away.

Already in Tommy Kerr's suspicious mind the mischief was done. Howell Gruffydd, all blandishments to his face, had been making secret inquiries behind his back, had he? He had been talking about compensation and whispering with attorneys and such-like, had he? Very well. That settled it. Tommy would go when he was purred out, and not before. As for that snuffling Howell Gruffydd....

"So that's it, Mister Treacle-Tongue, is it?" he had muttered. "Reight. As long as we know where we are. I'm off out to buy a ha'porth o' thread——"

And with the ha'porth of thread he had sewn a large button on each of his pocket-flaps, and thenceforward meeting Howell Gruffydd in the street, had ostentatiously buttoned every pocket up before answering the prosperous grocer's smiling "Good morning."

They began to dig the foundations of those glittering hotels.

They did so, as it happened, in the early part of that same summer that saw Edward Garden's ingenious advertisements put into execution—the summer of the Eisteddfod and the Brass Band Contest. Llanyglo was packed with people. Two days before the Eisteddfod, there began to troop into the town from all parts bards and singers, poets and harpers and minstrels and the members of a chorus five hundred voices strong. They came in their everyday clothes, moustached like vikings, bearded and maned like lions, and instantly with their coming the Saxon took a back seat. Shopkeepers left their counters, publicans clapped down the half-filled glasses, and ran to their doors as this honoured singer or that famous bard passed their windows. They walked with stately slow walk and stately slow head-turnings, and happy was the Welshman who got a motion of the hand or a benign smile from them. The Gorsedd had been publicly proclaimed; the temporary dancing hall behind Gardd Street, big enough for a regiment to drill in, had been made ready; the insignia in the Town Hall were as jealously watched and guarded as are the Crown Jewels in the Tower of London; and he was a prudent visitor who had realised that for three whole days he was likely to get but negligent attention from those who at other times were his humble servitors. For, fleer as aliens would, this was the Awakening of the Red Dragon. Their reproach that he was but a pasteboard Dragon fell to the ground. The Dragon was what the Dragon was, and if his service was theatrical, theatricalism is ennobled when its boards are the soil itself and each of its actors an AntÆus, strong because his foot is upon the ground that bred him. In England, behind his smile, the Welshman is an enigma of reserve; but see him at his Eisteddfod, with money waiting to be taken at his closed shop-doors....

With the ceremony of the Gorsedd on the opening day Dafydd Dafis's spellbound and uplifted hours began. At the sounding of the trumpets his head flew proudly up; at the Drawing of the Sword and the solemn question, "Is there Peace in the land?" his voice joined in the reply, like a thunder-clap, "There is Peace"—for that was before the year when, for three whole days, the blade remained naked and bright, while far over the seas brave Englishmen and brave Welshmen fell and died together. It was the single victory of Dafydd's life. On ordinary days he now drove a road-engine—Howell Gruffydd had got him the job under the Council; but he was a Lord of Song now. He had put his name down for the "penillion" contest; should he prove successful, not he himself only, but Llanyglo also, the place of his birth, would be forever famous. He sat behind the semicircle of white-robed and oak-crowned and druid-like figures that occupied the front part of the platform, looking down on the vast oblong of faces, Saxon and Welsh, that resembled a packed bed of London Pride; he was in the tenor wedge of the chorus; and as the five hundred voices pealed together you thought of the roof and of that singer whose voice had shivered vessels of glass.... Coming out of the hall again at the end of the first day, Dafydd was still in his trance. As he walked along the street past the "Trafford" Tap, Tommy Kerr, who sat within drinking, hailed him and called for a song, while one of his boon companions crying "Nay, we don't ask nobody to sing for nowt!" cast a couple of pennies on the ground; but Dafydd seemed neither to see nor to hear. At the break-up after the last chorus an august hand had been placed on Dafydd's shoulder, and an archangelic voice had spoken to him, saying that he, he the great one, had heard of Dafydd Dafis; and what, after that, did pot-house insults matter? He passed on, his eyes still flashing and his face shining like the Silver Chair itself....

Two days later he was proclaimed the victor in the "penillion" contest, and on the day after that, still drunk with song, he drove his road-engine again. And so passed Llanyglo's first Eisteddfod.

The Brass Band Contest five weeks later was a triumph in a different way. The impression now was one, not of unity, but of the keen spirit of faction. The "Besses o' th' Barn" were at the crest of their fame, but the "Black Dike" ran them close, and not far behind came "Wyke Temperance" and "Meltham Mills"; and had these been, not Bands, but football teams, local rivalry could not have run higher. True, underneath the sporting interest lay the musical. This performer's "lipping" and the "triple-tonguing" of the other were matters of endless debate among the expert; nuances of ensemble and attack were hotly argued in strong Lancashire and Yorkshire accents; and the devotees were ready to fight with their fists over the fame of the conductors of their fancy. But, without unity, the Contest proved, for all save the Brass-band-maniacs, a little wearisome. The ear began to revolt against the reiterated "test-piece," and one pitied the judge hidden away in his carefully guarded cubicle. Fewer Welsh attended the Contest than had English the Eisteddfod, and a day was judged sufficient for it. After a sensational replay with the "Besses," "Black Dike" took pride of place, with "Meltham Mills" third. The strains of Zampa and The Bronze Horse sounded once more only, when they massed the Bands in the evening in the Floral Valley; and (the Council having sanctioned a charge of sixpence as the fee for entrance) the sum of £115 was taken at the temporary barriers. So passed the Brass Band Contest also.

By the June of that year the understructure of the Pier was finished, and the rest was advancing with the speed of paper-hanging. The contractors were under time-penalties to be ready for the formal opening on the forthcoming August Bank Holiday. All through the night the sounds of the planking could be heard, and pavilion-parts, lettered and numbered and ready gilded and painted, were rushed along in haste. At the same time the Big Wheel began to resemble the largest circle of the Floral Valley set up on end; it was wonderful to stand beneath it and to gaze up through the intricacy of tie and strut and lattice at the sky. Immense hoardings filled a large part of Pontnewydd Street; by and by they would be taken down again, and the faÇades of those magnificent new hotels would appear; but Llanyglo would scarcely turn its head to look at them. They were getting used to this now. Besides, they had plenty else to do. The town was so full that they were turning away money into its nearest place of overflow—Porth Neigr.

Then, in the beginning of August, a hundred portents were fulfilled. There began to run into the station train after train, with three or four faces at each window. Doors opened almost before the engines had begun to slow down, and (as if the trains had been veins and somebody had suddenly slit them up, spilling out the life within) the platforms were suddenly black and overrun with people. They carried bags, baskets, hampers, parcels, stools, pillows, babies. Inside the carriages they left crumpled newspapers, trodden sandwiches, bottles, nuts, corks, the heads and tails of shrimps. Their tickets had been taken miles back—no collecting-staff could have coped for a moment with the emptying of those wheeled and windowed veins of impoverished blood. Parents carrying babies stood prudently aside from that first mad rush to the entrance. Many of them had been up since half-past four that morning; they had spent seven hours in the train, twelve and thirteen and fourteen in a carriage, standing, sitting on one another's knees, lying on the rows of feet; and now they made straight for air. Certain trains had been told off for week-end travellers; others were labelled "Special" or "Day Excursion Only." Those who had come by these would have seven hours in Llanyglo, and at the end of that time they would squeeze into the trains again for seven, eight, ten hours more—for on the return journey they must attend the convenience of every other wheel on the line, and a stand of an hour or so at two o'clock in the morning would be but an incident. During that short space in which they would breathe the wonderful Llanyglo air they would eat the meals they had brought with them, or else besiege the inns and eating-houses and tea-rooms and confectioners'-shops. They were the first trippers—spinning operatives, weavers, twisters, warp-dressers, mechanics, asbestos-hands, stokers, clerks, shopkeepers, the grey and unnumbered multitude itself. Some would enjoy themselves, some would vow they enjoyed themselves, and some would declare it "a toil of a pleasure," and would drag about on hot and swollen and weary feet, repeating at intervals, "Niver again—niver as long as I live!" And the lagging children's arms would be almost wrenched off at the shoulders, and some would fall asleep with the sticky paint of the penny toys dyeing their hands, and the platforms would begin to fill up again three hours before the time of departure of the train, for the sake of the chances of corner seats, or indeed of seats at all, and also because, on that horrible arduous day, the station itself would seem almost like a home....

Yes, as the Laceys and Briggses had followed Edward Garden, and those who could not (but would) afford it had followed the Briggses and Laceys, and the Utopia readers these, and the fortnight and ten-days' people these, and all sorts and conditions of people for varying lengths of time these again, so now the unnumbered rest had come.... "The first tripper, and I'm off," the Briggses and the Laceys had said; and which of us is not a Briggs or a Lacey in this? Which of us can say without misgiving that he would have remained in Llanyglo? Could we have endured the sight of our kind in this bulk—or could we have endured to think, either, that if they were not there for that dreadful day they would still be elsewhere? Can we, in the unshared solitude of our hearts, bear to think of this rank and damp and steaming human undergrowth at all? Would the Squire, seeing these, still have thought as much of his books on Church Plate and Brasses, still have defended the integrity of something not for all? Would Minetta Garden have looked on them with a sort of incurious interest as so many "types"? Or would we all, Minetta, the Squire, you, I, have felt meanly and skulkingly relieved when the last tail-light had died away in the night again?

There is neither "Yes" nor "No" to be answered. I may rant of brotherhood and humanity, but you—you may remember that cart jolting without noise over the sandhills, the blue and primrose petals of those butterflies, the amethyst-tufts of wild thyme, the milkwort, the harebells, and then, of a sudden, that V with the sea beyond. I, choosing to shoulder all the responsibility of a world in the making of which I was not consulted, may moisten that human peat with my tears, but you—you, passionate for beauty's sake, may mourn a loveliness deflowered and a simplicity destroyed. It is no virtue in me, no harshness in you. We both are what we are and do what we can. Llanyglo also was what it had become and did what it could. And Llanyglo, after all, had a solace that we lack. It was an inferior one, but better than nothing. Their beach might be littered, their streets made pitiful; their lodging-house keepers might put every loose jug or china dog or ornament away, and replace them again only after these had gone; strange accents might grate upon their ears, different and disliked minds frame the thoughts those accents expressed; yet balm remained. There was not a tripper, no, not the poorest of them, but spent his three, four, or five shillings in the town.