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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 before death, he summoned to him his sons. “Off away am I to the Palace,” he said.

“Large will be the shout of joy among the angels,” Aben told him.

“And much weeping there will be in Sion,” said Dan. “Speak you a little verse for a funeral preach.”

“Cease you your babblings, now, indeed,” Sheremiah demanded. “Born first you were, Aben, and you get Rhydwen. And you, Dan, Penlan.”

“Father bach,” Aben cried, “not right that you leave more to me than Dan.”

“Crow you do like a cuckoo,” Dan admonished his brother. “Wise you are, father. Big already is your giving to me.”

Aben looked at the window and he beheld a corpse candle moving outward through the way of the gate. “Religious you lived, father Sheremiah, and religious you put on a White Shirt.” Then Aben spoke of the sight he had seen.

The old man opened his lips, counseling: “Hish, hish, boys. Break you trenches in Penlan, Dan. Poor bad are farms without water. More than everything is water.” He died, and his sons washed him and clothed him in a White Shirt of the dead, and clipped off his long beard, which ceasing to grow, shall not entwine his legs and feet and his arms and hands on the Day of Rising; and they bowed their heads in Sion for the full year.

Dan and Aben lived in harmony. They were not as brothers, but as strangers; neighborly and at peace. They married wives, by whom they had children, and they sat in the Big Seat in Sion. They mowed their hay and reaped their corn at separate periods, so that one could help the other; if one needed the loan of anything he would borrow it from his brother; if one’s heifer strayed into the pasture of the other, the other would say: “The Big Man will make the old grass grow.” On the Sabbath they and their children walked as in procession to Sion.

In accordance with his father’s word, Dan dug ditches in Penlan; and against the barnyard–which is at the forehead of his house–water sprang up, and he caused it to run over his water-wheel into his pond.

Now there fell upon this part of Cardiganshire a season of exceeding drought. The face of the earth was as the face of a cancerous man. There was no water in any of the ditches of Rhydwen and none in those of Penlan. But the spring which Dan had found continued to yield, and from it Aben’s wife took away water in pitchers and buckets; and to the pond Aben brought his animals.

One day Aben spoke to Dan in this wise: “Serious sure, an old bother is this.”

“Iss-iss,” replied Dan. “Good is the Big Man to allow us water bach.”

“How speech you if I said: ‘Unfasten your pond and let him flow into my ditches’?”

“The land will suck him before he goes far,” Dan answered.

Aben departed; and he considered: “Did not Penlan belong to Sheremiah? Travel under would the water and hap spout up in my close. Nice that would be. Nasty is the behavior of Dan and there’s sly is the job.”

To Dan he said: “Open your pond, man, and let the water come into the ditches which father Sheremiah broke.”

Dan would not do as Aben desired, wherefore Aben informed against him in Sion, crying: “Little Big Man, know you not what a Turk is the fox? One eye bach I have, but you have two, and can see all his wickedness. Make you him pay the cost.” He raised his voice so high that the congregation could not discern the meaning thereof, and it shouted as one person: “Wo, now, boy Sheremiah! What is the matter, say you?”