From Across the Ancient Waters Read Online Free PDF Page B

variety of services available from a blacksmith, a cobbler, and a doctor from their homes on the outskirts of town.
    The school and the chapel, the same white-harled steepled stone edifice serving for both, stood at one end of the town. Beyond it the single wide street turned toward the harbor, gradually narrowed to a single lane not quite wide enough even for two farm wagons to pass, and skirted the coast northward for another mile before veering inland to connect again with the main road north where it led a course around the waters of Traeth Bach.
    At the opposite end of town, walkers through Llanfryniog passed two other churches, symbolically facing one another from opposing sides. The wide thoroughfare then continued straight south, rising through farmland above the sea toward the plateau of Mochras Head. There, like its northern counterpart, it wound back inland to reconnect to the north-south road connecting Blaenau Ffestiniog in the mountains near Snowdon with Barmouth where the River Afton emptied into Barmouth Bay.
    Near the top of the Mochras slope, a private avenue led off the main road east and inland into the foothills. An imposing iron gate across it with gatehouse beside stood some fifty yards off the main road. From this impressive entryway, the approach led along a winding tree-lined course of some half a mile up a continuing incline to Westbrooke Manor. The largest mansion for fifty miles sat at the base of the Cambrian range, which, as the hills surrounding it increased in height, led some miles inland to the southern peaks of Snowdonia.
    Though it was a mere village housing a thousand people or less, its proximity to Westbrooke Manor, as well as the small natural harbor in the protected waters of Tremadog Bay, gave Llanfryniog the distinction of being of ancient date and of a certain historic importance. Centuries earlier it had been a sort of sister village to Harlech, the administrative seat for the surrounding coastal area. That Harlech Castle—built in the late thirteenth century by Edward I, dominating the region for centuries, and considered by some the most perfect castle design in all Britain—was now reduced to a stupendous but impotent stone shell took nothing away from the historic tradition of both towns.
    Notwithstanding that serious judicial functions had long since passed to the larger cities of northern Wales, Llanfryniog continued as home to a lay magistrate, whose duties were largely at the behest of the viscount and involved minor civil matters. It was his daughter, in fact, whom the viscount’s son and daughter had come to town on this day to visit. Neither viscount nor magistrate, however, benefited from the services of a local policeman. For that they must depend on Porthmadog to the north or Dolgellau south and inland, both about fifteen miles distant.
    It was not a serious deficiency. The need for either serious law enforcement or legal proceedings in such a rural oasis, where farming, fishing, and slate mining occupied most of the waking hours of its working men, was rarely felt. That they enjoyed their stout, and occasionally partook of more than their wives might have wished, belied the fact that these were good men, devoted to family, church, and the friendships that bound their community together. Nearly to a man, in spite of conflicting religious affiliation, most would have given their lives for any other. They would indisputably have bound together in common cause against any foe, no matter what the odds, whether real or imaginary.
    If the Celtic blood of their ancestors had inbred a troublesome flaw into their collective nature beyond an occasional hot temper, it was an affinity for the bizarre, the paranormal, and the occult. Their religion, whether Catholic, Anglican, or Protestant, was so laced with superstition as in some respects to be scarcely distinguishable from the paganism of its ancient origins. The staid memberships of both Catholic and Church of England