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?”

The anger which Aben nourished against Dan waxed hot.  Rain came, and it did not abate, and the man plotted mischief to his brother’s damage.  In heavy darkness he cut the halters which held Dan’s cows and horses to their stalls and drove the animals into the road.  He also poisoned pond Penlan, and a sheep died before it could be killed and eaten.

Dan wept very sore.  “Take you the old water,” he said.  “Fat is my sorrow.”

“Not religious you are,” Aben censured him.  “All the water is mine.”

“Useful he is to me,” Dan replied.  “Like would I that he turns my wheel as he goes to you.”

“Clap your mouth,” answered Aben.

“Not as much as will go through the leg of a smoking pipe shall you have.”

In Sion Aben told the Big Man of all the benefits which he had conferred upon Dan.

Men and women encouraged his fury; some said this:  “An old paddy is Dan to rob your water.  Ach y fi”; and some said this:  “A dirty ass is the mule.”  His fierce wrath was not allayed albeit Dan turned the course of the water away from his pond, and on his knees and at his labor asked God that peace might come.

“Bury the water,” Aben ordered, “and fill in the ditch, Satan.”

“That will I do speedily,” Dan answered in his timidity.  “Do you give me an hour fach, for is not the sowing at hand?” Aben would not hearken unto his brother.  He deliberated with a lawyer, and Dan was made to dig a ditch straightway from the spring to the close of Rhydwen, and he put pipes in the bottom of the ditch, and these pipes he covered with gravel and earth.

So as Dan did not sow, he had nothing to reap; and people mocked him in this fashion:  “Come we will and gather in your harvest, Dan bach.”  He held his tongue, because he had nothing to say.  His affliction pressed upon him so heavily that he would not be consoled and he hanged himself on a tree; and his body was taken down at the time of the morning stars.