The knot of swains now separated, and ran in different directions to avoid being recognized as the perpetrators of the “freak;” but soon met again at an appointed place, where they had left our hero, between the empty carts of the ware vendors.
On their arrival at the place, they searched in vain for their enchantress, in whose service they had wrought so gallantly, but no traces of the fair one could they find. There was a general smelling of a trick put upon them, and consequent “curses on all jilting jades, and biting ballad-singers,” uttered by the unlucky clods.
A brilliant idea suddenly struck Ready Rosser. He had taken off his coat and left it in the careful custody of the injured damsel. Where was she? Could she have disappeared? All doubts were soon removed, for on ascertaining the precise spot where he had left her, he found her complete feminine attire, made into a bundle and fastened to a cart with a band of straw, left as a love-gift for him, while she kept his as a similar token of affection; having inscribed with chalk on the side of the cart.—“An exchange is no robbery;” a motto in which our rustic could not see, in its present application, any principles of justice whatever.
ESCAPE of Twm from Cardigan. Meets an old friend. The heiress of Maes-y-velin, a most tragical legendary ballad.
The addition to his wardrobe pleased Twm exactly, and he had no qualms of conscience to prevent him from using it, for he remembered how easily he had been despoiled of his own. Not being fastidious about a dressing-room, Twm retired to a stable, and soon came out fully clad in his male attire; of which a coat only was before wanting.
Bent on a precipitate retreat, as the urgency of his case demanded, he bolted down St. Mary’s Street, and soon found himself on the turnpike road, with the good town of Cardigan some miles behind him. In little more than two hours he reached the small town of Dinas Emlyn, now called New-castle-in-Emlyn, on a romantic part of the Teivy, dividing the counties of Cardigan and Carmarthen, and occupying its banks on each side. Entering a small public-house, he regaled himself on the fine potent ale for which that place has been so long famous.