Chapter One Summary

The adult narrator, Huw, is preparing now to leave his valley, using his mother's familiar old blue cloth to wrap around his clothing. He has not told Olwen he is leaving. His parents meet when she is 16 and he twenty, and fall in love at first sight during a terrible winter. Housing and money are scarce, but his father earns real gold, and rents this home for twenty years before buying it.

The family has always lived on this steep hill that looks down into the valley, where dusty miners walk home each day to their houses, hand-made of stone, while their women wait on their porches. Huw recalls Saturdays when the workers bring home their pay in gold and families eat abundant feasts.

His mother and his father, Gwilym, decide on how to use the family box that is filled...