Maesmawr Hall is only a few fields distant from the station without a road. Why that station should be called Moat Lane, when it has neither moat nor lane, is not explained to us. As a rule Wales is not short of nice long place-names; it is the pronouncing of them that is the difficulty.

Through big white gates and a long straight avenue we ride to Maesmawr. A gigantic wolf or boar hound comes to see if there is anything to eat. We are kindly received and shown round. Here are two curious staircases, one a very small one and the other massive and elaborate, on opposite sides of the great central chimneystack. "Sarah Davies, 1764," is scratched on the glass.

BUTTER AND CHEESE

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We have heard that name before. The timber front is uncommonly and fantastically ornamented. Our usual complaint troubles us, and we hurry to Penarth, another fine black-and-white house, plainer and heavier than Maesmawr. The flat ceiling of the house-place or central hall is mainly held up by one straight beam of oak, probably twenty feet long and nearly two feet square The enormous size and profusion of the oak in most of these old halls is wonderful. Amongst other ancient furniture is a rack filled with the once well-known willow-pattern plates. The farmeress, in broken English, tells of the difficulty of making both ends meet, and asks how I know they make cheese. "Because I smell it." "Cannot you smell my good butter also?" "No; with butter no smell is good smell." This old trade proverb puzzles her, and I refrained from telling her another, which says you should never get your cheese and butter from the same farm, especially in Wales.

MORE ABOUT POWYSLAND

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N another pilgrimage to Powysland we left the train at Four Crosses, another little station in the fields on the Cambrian line. The name of the station or place seems as farfetched as that of Moat Lane, for the only cross we could hear of is that one lane crosses another at some distance from the station, and that sort of a cross is very common in lanes.

We asked our way to Penrhos Hall, and near to it turned aside to photograph a farmhouse on the steep hillside that is called Llwyn. It was built in the days when men looked for a big oak with a curving bole, split it in two, and with the opposite sides formed the gable of a house, a single piece of everlasting oak from floor to ridge. In one of these main timbers, which was half a yard in breadth, a very strong swarm of bees had made their hive, just as we saw them at the World's End and Valle Crucis. The front of the house was overgrown with plum trees, and a granary or store-room, made entirely of wood, up a steep flight of stone steps, looks rather Swiss-like, and as if it might have been inhabited some day. There are lots of poultry, turkeys, and pigs wandering about; a broken-legged gander; the horseleech has come to a lame horse; it is washing day, and they ask us to come in and have some ale, "all as throngt as dogs i dough," as a Cheshire saying describes a very busy day.

Penrhos Hall is one of the most picturesque desolate houses that any one could imagine. It is at the end of a