THE

DENNES OF DAUNDELYONN.

CHAPTER I.

ANTECEDENTS.

"I remember, I remember, how my childhood fleeted by, The mirth of its December, and the warmth of its July." W. M. PRAED.

I was born in that portion of her Majesty's dominions denominated the "Principality;" in other words, I first saw the little light a November day afforded in a large breezy room, in a rambling, old-fashioned house, near a small and very ancient fishing town in Pembrokeshire, South Wales.

The walls of this room were stencilled with a pattern of a muddy blue design, upon a salmon

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coloured ground; the hangings were of an exceedingly old-fashioned and peculiar chintz, whereon Prussian-blue cows were perpetually being milked by Indian-red dairymaids, in gamboge meadows, with a glorious background of spiky setting suns.

This "landscape with figures" was repeated over and over again, with cruel perseverance, on tester, valance, and curtain; the furniture was of the simplest stained wood, and the carpet one of those many-coloured Kidderminsters, of large pattern and violent hues, now happily almost extinct.

The view from the windows embraced a broad expanse of sea and sky, a strip of brown beach, and in the distance a rudely constructed pier and slip, close beside which clustered the cottages of the wealthier fishermen, washed externally with a bright yellow ochre, while nestling around these were the hovels of a yet poorer class, all coloured white, in token of their occupants being of the plebeian order.

Among my earliest perceptions I remember something red, which I have since been given to understand was my father, but which I incline