the money he got with her, and the money he borrowed, he bought Deinol.  Soon he was freed from the hands of his lender.  He had eight horses and twelve cows, and he had oxen and heifers, and pigs and hens, and he had twenty-five sheep grazing on his moorland.  As his birth and poverty had caused him to be scorned, so now his gains caused him to be respected.  The preacher of Capel Dissenters in Morfa saluted him on the tramping road and in shop, and brought him down from the gallery to the Big Seat.  Even if Abel had land, money, and honor, his vessel of contentment was not filled until his wife went into her deathbed and gave him a son.

“Indeed me,” he cried, “Benshamin his name shall be.  The Large Maker gives and a One He is for taking away.”

He composed a prayer of thankfulness and of sorrow; and this prayer he recited to the congregation which gathered at the graveside of the woman from Drefach.

Benshamin grew up in the way of Capel Dissenters.  He slept with his father and ate apart from his sisters, for his mien was lofty.  At the age of seven he knew every question and answer in the book “Mother’s Gift,” with sayings from which he scourged sinners; and at the age of eight he delivered from memory the Book of Job at the Seiet; at that age also he was put among the elders in the Sabbath School.

He advanced, waxing great in religion.  On the nights of the Saying and Searching of the Word he was with the cunningest men, disputing with the preacher, stressing his arguments with his fingers, and proving his learning with phrases from the sermons of the saintly Shones Talysarn.

If one asked him:  “What are you going, Ben Abel Deinol?” he always answered:  “The errander of the White Gospel fach.”

His father communed with the preacher, who said:  “Pity quite sinful if the boy is not in the pulpit.”

“Like that do I think as well too,” replied Abel.  “Eloquent he is.  Grand he is spouting prayers at his bed.  Weep do I.”

Neighbors neglected their fields and barnyards to hear the lad’s shoutings to God.  Once Ben opened his eyes and rebuked those who were outside his room.

“Shamed you are, not for certain,” he said to them.  “Come in, boys Capel.  Right you hear the Gospel fach.  Youngish am I but old is my courtship of King Jesus who died on the tree for scamps of parsons.”

He shut his eyes and sang of blood, wood, white shirts, and thorns; of the throng that would arise from the burial-ground, in which there were more graves than molehills in the shire.  He cried against the heathenism of the Church, the wickedness of Church tithes, and against ungodly book-prayers and short sermons.

Early Ben entered College Carmarthen, where his piety—­which was an adage—­was above that of any student.  Of him this was said:  “’White Jesus bach is as plain on his lips as the purse of a big bull.’”